IBM hands out virus-infected USB sticks to security conference attendees

By Michael Bettiol on May 21, 2010 at 5:40 PM

General May 21, 2010 at 5:40 PM

See also: This article’s headline.

[Via Giz]

26 Comments

Stromson

Day, you have officially been made. Hilarious.
ThinkTank

Perhaps now Trojan Condom employees will think twice before they have a company conference.
3 Phones Jugglin

Aww man, i thought i sent the Infected Sticks to Apple for their Conference….It was supposed to Say…”Fuck you Steve Jobs…This message will self destruct in 5 Seconds”

Followed by the Android Logo & A Naked Woman….

Sorry IBM…No beef wit u guys…

greekfuzball

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Celz

There are plenty of iViri in the world.. The iphone has more than other smartphone.. Once people start buying macs for work and not fashion the hackers will start to target them more
DorothyMantooth

That argument was valid in ’96 when Mac OS had a 3% market share. Not today. Mac OS X (desktop version) has a 10 percent market share, 80% of the Fortune 500 companies use Macs, the third largest company in the world only uses Macs, and if you add in all of the devices that run the mobile-varient of OS X, you have one big crowd to attack. The temptation is there, but it is far too hard to create a self-replicating virus on UNIX. Same thing goes for Linux.
jc

but theres a reason the 3rd largest company in the world uses only macs. BECAUSE ITS APPLE!
Steve

JC: Uh, I believe that was the point.

http://end8.com end8

Very funny. Now do they have to pay IBM to ‘treat’ the virus?
MikeD

Ouch. Talk about irony.

You sure they didn’t do it on purpose? Wicked sales pitch right?

Stromson

I’m hopeful this was on purpose, and that IBM is entering a new, mischievous phase.
Tdot34

I also thought at first it was on purpose as a marketing tool, which would have been a great idea as long is it didn’t cause any loss of information. But according to the attached article, it was not on purpose, and IBM has told all attendees to return the USB sticks to the head-office.

NuShrike

It was a test, and everybody failed.
Jarrett

Hopefully any Mac users at the conference kept the USB “sticks” and continually plugged them in just to torment the “other” users and their non-Mac gear.

http://pdabreak.com PDA Break

You think that they would have tested them before actually handing them out
SteveBerman

NOOBS!
wOCKAwOCKA

ARE YOU FOR REAL?!! who actually tests USB sticks before handing them out – besides (unfortunately) in IBM’s defense – Chinese USB stick makers have been tasked with producing intentionally infected sticks to compromise U.S. security – It’s why government officials with security clearance are no longer allowed to use them. An IBM security conference would be a perfect target.
http://www.opswat.com tom mullen

You’d think at this point, it would be a software release management standard to scan any digital product with multiple AVs for malware before shipping.