By I was wondering why this notice not to use thumb drives in government computers went out:
The Defense Department has banned the use of removable flash media and storage devices from all government computers, according to a series of notices put out by the services this week.
The action comes following reports that a worm virus known as “Agent.btz” was discovered infecting some DOD networks, according to Wired magazine.
LeAnne MacAllister, 5th Signal Command’s director of Strategic Communication, U.S. Army Europe, said this week that leadership directed her office to stop using thumb drives — portable memory devices used to store or transfer files.
A separate internal Army e-mail told some government computer users across Europe to turn in all removable media devices.
In an e-mail sent Thursday to all Navy European customers in Naples, officials said “effective immediately all USB Thumb drives, memory sticks/cards and camera flash cards are PROHIBITED from use on any Navy Network (NIPR or SIPR) until further notice.”
A worldwide directive issued Thursday by the Marine Corps offered similar restrictions.
“The only authorized media for use on DOD networks is media purchased and provided by the government,” the Marine announcement said. “Under no circumstances will personally owned removable media be considered mission essential or used on government networks.” [Stars & Stripes]
I was a bit annoyed when this notice came out because recently I was told my unit can only use thumb drives purchased through the government on DOD computers and not civilian purchased thumb drives because of various security reasons. No problem, so I went out and used my unit funds to buy the government approved thumb drives. Now two months later they are no good because of this.
What else is annoying about this is that I have to hear the reason for the ban on these drives by reading the Stars & Stripes and Wired instead of from the Army.
9:07 pm on November 21st, 2008 1
I heard there was a case in Korea a couple of years ago where a thumb drive with a trojan was "lost" where a high-ranking member of USFK would "find" it.
Of course, he picked it up and couldn't wait to check it out on his work computer which immediately started saving key strokes and collecting files and sending them out as harmless looking e-mails.
This was very quiet at the time and I am surprised it took so long for DOD to ban them.
12:10 am on November 22nd, 2008 2
Just as a cute aside — as I scrolled, I happened to note that the Amazon ad generated with this post was all filled with flash drives!!
1:18 am on November 22nd, 2008 3
I'm surprised someone compromised network security by releasing this information. One of the first rules of information security is if you're being targeted with an attack (in this case a trojan), you don't let the adversary know that his attack is having an effect. This press release just verified to the world that our networks were impacted by a virus.
5:09 am on November 22nd, 2008 4
Did anyone hear computer work come to a screeching halt, or was that just quiet voices behind doors, as people continued to use Thumb Drives?
With the hodge-poge of various systems & file sizes, & size limitations placed on In boxes, this was NOT a well thought out directive.
5:53 am on November 22nd, 2008 5
Obviously, the only way to infect a computer is via a USB port. It is completely impossible to do so via CDROM or even floppy. Phew! I'm glad those media are safe!
Brought to you by: Yet another DoD, ill-infrmed, knee-jerk reaction…
"Look! We are doing something!"
7:39 am on November 22nd, 2008 6
On one hand I've seen field grades misplacing classified thumb drives and/or sticking them into NIPR computers, and on the other hand I've seen ROK officers infecting DoD computers with viruses.
Either way, I think this is a great way to force knowledge management and use of SharePoint portals and AKO/AKO-S. It will also ease some of the pain for the company grade slave doing all the work when his field grade bosses are running around with different versions of the same project on their respective USB drives and DVDs.
10:21 am on November 22nd, 2008 7
Where I work at, they made sure you could not use them.
All USB ports were disabled
12:02 pm on November 22nd, 2008 8
Everybody Say No – to Windows
http://www.amazon.com/Just-Say-No-Microsoft-Ditch/dp/159...
1:37 pm on November 22nd, 2008 9
No. #6:
Ever see Field Grades leve TS docs at home on the counter…leave safes open & then blame their Clerk?
Of course THEY never got in trouble, but I always keep CI's number handy to give them a hard time.
1:45 pm on November 22nd, 2008 10
CalmSeas, I've got a better one…in 2001 my battalion S3 walked into the TOC and calls out, "Has anyone seen my secret documents folder?"
Yeah, that was real good when hail & farewell time came around.
1:22 am on November 23rd, 2008 11
[...] Squirrel) (DoD PKI cert … iase.disa.mil/index2.html • Found on Windows Live Why USB Thumb Drives are Banned from DOD Networks Nov 22, 2008 … Why USB Thumb Drives are Banned from DOD Networks. » by GI Korea in: US [...]
9:59 am on December 26th, 2008 12
[...] move to ban removable media is old news, but to-date this policy has not been rescinded. The impacts of this decision are being felt DoD-wide, but I suspect many individuals and organizations are ignoring this directive. I know of one [...]
5:34 am on February 4th, 2009 13
This is sad, this means you have to trust your data to the retarded, lowest bidder monkeys, the military hires to maintain their networks. In the Navy we have NMCI, which has randomly nuked my account three times, if it wasn't for my trusty thumb drive I'd be up Duce-Creek. I guess it is time to go back to printing everything out, Welcome to the Paperless military…
2:57 pm on February 4th, 2009 14
Well you shouldn't be using USB thumbsticks for any form of official work. Those things are just TOO easy to loose / misplace, and they carry a very high risk of data being stolen. And this doesn't even get near the problem with classified data.
That being said, the actual bad in most places was on all USB data devices not just flash devices. This caused quite a bit of issues as alot of data is "air gaped" from NIPR to the various classified networks, usually on large USB HDD's that are then sanitized afterwords.
And yes its a knee jerk reaction to virus being let loose on a protected network from a personal thumb drive connected to a classified system. Ohh well, worse could of happened.
1:24 am on December 18th, 2009 15
Is the ROK military still using USB thumb drives? Sounds like an executive brief of 5027 was leaked….