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PSA: That free USB stick in the parking lot is a trap, and I almost fell for it
So last Tuesday I'm walking out of the Walmart on 5th Street here in Austin and there's this USB drive just lying on the ground next to my car. Looked brand new, still had a little plastic cap on it. I picked it up without even thinking, like my hand moved before my brain caught up. Got home, plugged it into my work laptop like a total idiot, and Chrome instantly opened a fake login page for our company email. I yanked it out so fast I bent the port. Come to find out from our IT guy that this is a whole thing called USB baiting, and one study I read said something like half of people who find a random drive will plug it in. HALF. My IT guy said they pulled the same trick at a security event and 60 percent of the folks there did it anyway. What got me is I sit through the cyber training every year and still almost gave up my login. Has this happened to anyone else, or am I the only one who needs to glue my USB ports shut?
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the_ben26d ago
Yikes, that fake login page popping up is the scary part, not even the drive itself. Half of people plugging it in makes sense too, since our hands move faster than our brains when something looks free. Just don't beat yourself up, the bend port was your gut saving you in the end.
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