Police give out infected USBs as prizes in cybersecurity quiz

Police give out infected USBs as prizes in cybersecurity quiz

Slow clap. "The Taiwanese government last month celebrated its crackdown on cyber crime. The national police – the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CBI) – picked up 250 blank USB drives, each with an 8G capacity, to give out as prizes at the data security expo, hosted by the Presidential Office on 11-15 December. According to the Tapei Times, an employee at a New Taipei City-based contractor, Shawo Hwa Industries Co., transmitted the malware to the drives when testing their storage capacity… from his infected work station. Oops! the CBI said after investigating the infection, which wound up on 54 of the drives that were handed out to winners of a quiz about cybersecurity knowledge. “Winners of a quiz about cybersecurity knowledge,” as in, “people who hopefully know enough not to plug in random USB drives conveniently scattered throughout the parking lot but not necessarily those handed on a silver platter at a security expo.” According to the CBI, the 54 drives picked up an executable malware file that goes by the name of XtbSeDuA.exe. The CBI said that the malware was designed, years ago, to suck up personal data and transmit it to a Poland-based IP address that would then bounce the information to unidentified servers."