Lost & Found USB Done Right

[Carter]

We found a USB stick today at the college so we had a look to see if there was anything on it to notify the owner that it was found and we did. The owner was smart by having a folder at the root of the thumb stick saying "RETURN IF LOST". In this folder there was a file with the persons contact and a note.

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://i.imgur.com/z1CmHYM.jpg

[FN-GM]

That has certainly cheered me up!

[Poults]

It is nice to see when the kids here have used some initiative and left a text file on the usb if it is lost. Shame most of them still yank them out without ejecting and corrupting them though.

[nadeem]

It's one of the things I always tell my students to do (though I tell them to preface the folder/file name with 00 so that it sorts to the top)

[DavePa]

Happy ending in this case but be aware that this is regarded as one of the simplest ways to introduce (or attempt to introduce) a trojan to the network - I'm told there are USB devices for sale that can disable security on MAC as well as Windows based computers making this a popular 'social engineering' attack, after all the 1st thing any of us do when finding a USB key is to plug it in and see what's on it

[Blue_Cookeh]

It is nice to see when the kids here have used some initiative and left a text file on the usb if it is lost. Shame most of them still yank them out without ejecting and corrupting them though.

 

Don't really need to eject USB sticks nowadays. Windows 7 and above turns off write caching by default for flash based devices.

 

Still a good idea for USB hard disks though.

[Poults]

Don't really need to eject USB sticks nowadays. Windows 7 and above turns off write caching by default for flash based devices.

 

Still a good idea for USB hard disks though.

 

Well we seem to get a high enough failure rate and the common de-nominator every time is that they havent been ejected properly. Coincidence? Possibly, but doubtful.

[LeMarchand]

Well we seem to get a high enough failure rate and the common de-nominator every time is that they havent been ejected properly. Coincidence? Possibly, but doubtful.

 

Don't you also still get the "drive not ejected properly; want to run a disk check" nag from time to time as well? I was certainly getting it on Win 7.

[hardtailstar]

We found a USB stick today at the college so we had a look to see if there was anything on it to notify the owner that it was found and we did. The owner was smart by having a folder at the root of the thumb stick saying "RETURN IF LOST". In this folder there was a file with the persons contact and a note.

 

Where is this person! we must praise them! never thought of that, I'll certainly be introducing that idea.

 

Happy ending in this case but be aware that this is regarded as one of the simplest ways to introduce (or attempt to introduce) a trojan to the network - I'm told there are USB devices for sale that can disable security on MAC as well as Windows based computers making this a popular 'social engineering' attack, after all the 1st thing any of us do when finding a USB key is to plug it in and see what's on it

 

That's why you should always plug it into a computer/laptop logged into a local account not connected to a network