Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/04/12/strangers-thumbdrives.html
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5 Likes
Idiot. Should’ve gone to Mar-a-lago instead.
23 Likes
Hey, where do I get one o’ them?
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Idiots or thumb drives?
22 Likes
“Here, insert this thumb drive” is the new “hey, smell my finger.”
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Ever since the Mar-a-Lago Thumbdrive Incident™, I’ve been wracking my brain trying to figure our how these kinds of things work.
In this case, I bet the thief had obtained very specific knowledge about Western Union’s terminal workflows and just set up a fake HID keyboard device that uses shortcut keys to bring up a money transfer window, and then begins entering the fields on the form with pre-recorded keystrokes – name, tab, address, tab, account #, tab, enter key etc.
Such an attack would be very rigid – if they rolled out new software that added or removed a field, it would break. But chances are Western Union’s software is probably VERY old.
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A real thumb drive lets you flag down passing spacecraft.
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Just speculating, but the most likely vector is thumb drive delivery mechanism, coupled with a remote accesss trojan (RAT) payload. Although if the OS were hardened to not autorun the thumb drive contents, then yes a more sophisticated attack like HID keyboard input might be needed.
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It gives “auto-mount” a new implication.
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I hear both are available at Mar-a-lago.
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Repeating patterns of criminality is a sure path to destruction. I read a book by an FBI agent who specialized in bank robberies. He basically said anyone can get away with robbing a bank once, but each additional time you do it, your chances of getting caught go WAY up.
There was a small gang that tunneled into a bank vault in LA and got away with a huge chunk of change. The first time was so successful that they decided to try it again. Their second effort was discovered while still in the tunneling phase. Luckily, they weren’t there at the time and had been careful about evidence, so they were never caught. They also never tried that technique again.
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Hey, Vasile! That kind of shit may work in Bucharest, buddy, but not here in…
… oh, forget it.
Florida Man goes low rent high tech.
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“Hey, Western Union! Send a guy to my house. Yeah, I want to do a transfer. Tell him to bring a laptop.”
So… what version of Windows are they running at Western Union? 
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Is it wrong to feel better about my Internet Security Practices if there are so many people like this for the bear to eat before he even gets close to me? (except that will all the food lying around, it does seem that the bear population is exploding…)
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