Here’s an article on SC Magazine’s website on the explosive growth in storage capacities of USB flash drives, with a discussion of what steps can and should be taken to secure them. 

As SanDisk CEO Eli Harari pointed out recently, the increase in capacity of drives has exceeded Moore’s Law in recent years, making it increasingly tempting to use flash drives to store and transport large amounts of data. 

The article takes in comment from several vendors, including SanDisk, looking at the issue.  The conclusion is enterprises and IT-literate consumers are already taking advantage of secure flash drives to protect their data – but there will always be a price-conscious market for unsecured drives.

A new Windows Server worm that can spread via memory is attacking business systems.  The worm, called Downadup, attacks the vulnerability outlined in MS08-067, a Windows Server service flaw for which a patch is available.

 The worm launches a dictionary attack to attempt to crack user passwords, and is able to change itself and modify Access Control Lists to make it hard to disinfect.

The worm also propagates on client machines, via USB.  If a user plugs an unprotected memory stick into an infected computer, the malware creates an autorun.inf file on the root of the USB drive, which will then autorun or autoplay to infect any unpatched systems. 

 This USB attack vector can be stopped with our Cruzer Enterprise secure USB flash drives with onboard anti-virus scanning - helping to reduce incidences of infection.