USB flash drives have been in use for two decades now and have proven highly popular due to their accessibility, but do you know how dangerous they can be?
Perfect for people on the move, flash drives allow people to carry data with them and, if necessary, they can be used to boot up PCs. As a result, even 20 years on from their initial launch, millions upon millions of flash drives are sold every year. However, this popularity has made them a target for hackers and allowed them to add yet another weapon to their arsenal.
Due to the debilitating effect that a rogue flash drive can have on your organization, we’re going to run through the dangers of USB flash drives.
Understanding the Danger
As we’ve already stated, USB flash drives can be used by hackers to help spread their chaotic attacks and that’s why you need to be aware of exactly how they do this. Here are some of the major ways they can utilize flash drives in their attacks:
- Installing Malware: A USB flash drive is more than capable of holding various strains of the most dangerous malware currently available. Naturally, it only takes one of these to take down your IT infrastructure, so you need to be exceptionally careful when plugging a flash drive into your network. This threat is made much worse by the fact that flash drives are capable of automatically running their contents once plugged into a USB port, so proceeding with caution (and the advice of an IT professional) is crucial.
- Stealing Data: Although a flash drive may look insignificant, it’s still capable of running applications that can log keystrokes. While this may sound relatively simple, when you look a little deeper you’ll realize that this means everything you type is recorded. This includes login details, secure communications and customer data. This can either be saved back to the flash drive or transmitted to a remote server. Either way, the impact of data theft can have severe ramifications for your organization.
- Malicious Damage: Not every hacker is out to steal data or take over the processing power of your PC, but you can rest assured that they want to cause some form of damage to your business. And, sometimes, this can be as simple as damaging your PCs beyond all repair. Achieving this may sound dramatic, but the means are rather simple. It’s possible to buy devices such as the USB Killer which essentially fry the electrics of any PC it’s plugged into.
Are USB Flash Drives Safe to Use?
You’d be forgiven for thinking that flash drives are to be avoided at all costs, but the truth is that they are safe to use. However, it’s important that you always treat them as a potential security risk. Therefore, make sure that you only ever use trusted flash drives and, ideally, get these checked before installing them to your network. And, most importantly, if you find a flash drive out in the car park, make sure that it never goes anywhere near your network!
For more ways to secure and optimize your business technology, contact your local IT professionals.
