In a recent
study, researchers from Google and the universities of Illinois and Michigan dropped nearly 300 USB sticks off at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus and measured how many of these were plugged into student machines.
The findings were alarming, and indicative of just how dangerous USBs can be. “We found that users picked up, plugged in, and clicked on files in 48% of the drives we dropped,” the authors of the report commented. “They did so quickly: the first drive was connected in less than six minutes.”
A small number, just 32%, took precautions to protect themselves from possible threats. For those respondents who considered protective measures, 16% scanned the drive with their antivirus software while 8% believed that their operating system or security software would protect them.
More surprisingly perhaps, another 8% ‘sacrificed’ a personal computer or used university resources to protect their personal equipment.
