[BBC] IBM workers banned from using USB sticks

[BBC] IBM workers banned from using USB sticks
Full story: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44069488

Staff at IBM have been banned from using removable memory devices such
as USB sticks, SD cards and flash drives.

The possibility of "financial and reputational" damage if staff lost or
misused the devices prompted the decision, reported The Register.

Instead, IBM staff who need to move data around will be encouraged to do
so via an internal network.

The decree banning removable storage acknowledges that complying with it
could be "disruptive".

Losing data

..... more ....


--
@~@ Remain silent! Drink, Blink, Stretch! Live long and prosper!!
/ v \ Simplicity is Beauty!
/( _ )\ May the Force and farces be with you!
^ ^ (x86_64 Ubuntu 9.10) Linux 2.6.39.3
ä¸�借貸! ä¸�è©�騙! ä¸�è³*錢! ä¸�æ�´äº¤! ä¸�打交! ä¸�打劫! ä¸�自殺! ä¸�求神! 請考慮綜æ�´
(CSSA):
http://www.swd.gov.hk/tc/index/site_...sub_addressesa

Mr. Man-wai Chang wrote:
[BBC] IBM workers banned from using USB sticks
Full story: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44069488

Staff at IBM have been banned from using removable memory devices such
as USB sticks, SD cards and flash drives.

The possibility of "financial and reputational" damage if staff lost or
misused the devices prompted the decision, reported The Register.

Instead, IBM staff who need to move data around will be encouraged to do
so via an internal network.

The decree banning removable storage acknowledges that complying with it
could be "disruptive".

Losing data

.... more ....

Hmmm! I thought this was the twenty-first century, not the twentieth!?

But heh, better late than never!

In message , Mr. Man-wai
Chang writes:
[BBC] IBM workers banned from using USB sticks
Full story: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44069488

Staff at IBM have been banned from using removable memory devices such
as USB sticks, SD cards and flash drives.

The possibility of "financial and reputational" damage if staff lost or
misused the devices prompted the decision, reported The Register.

Instead, IBM staff who need to move data around will be encouraged to
do so via an internal network.

The decree banning removable storage acknowledges that complying with
it could be "disruptive".

Losing data

.... more ....


The company I worked for banned them many years ago - for reasons of (a)
concern of theft of secure [either in the government (it was a defence
contractor) or commercial sense] material, and (b) fear of infection.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go. - Oscar Wilde

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote:
In message , Mr. Man-wai
Chang writes:
[BBC] IBM workers banned from using USB sticks
Full story: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44069488

Staff at IBM have been banned from using removable memory devices such
as USB sticks, SD cards and flash drives.

The possibility of "financial and reputational" damage if staff lost or
misused the devices prompted the decision, reported The Register.

Instead, IBM staff who need to move data around will be encouraged to
do so via an internal network.

The decree banning removable storage acknowledges that complying with
it could be "disruptive".

Losing data

.... more ....


The company I worked for banned them many years ago - for reasons of (a)
concern of theft of secure [either in the government (it was a defence
contractor) or commercial sense] material, and (b) fear of infection.

Exactly. Same with the little 150K employee computer company I worked
for. As soon as USB ports showed up on computers, they were made
inoperable. (No card-readers at that time.) That was well before the
year 2000.

Frank Slootweg wrote in
news
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote:
In message , Mr. Man-wai
Chang writes:
[BBC] IBM workers banned from using USB sticks
Full story: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44069488

Staff at IBM have been banned from using removable memory devices
such as USB sticks, SD cards and flash drives.

The possibility of "financial and reputational" damage if staff lost
or misused the devices prompted the decision, reported The Register.

Instead, IBM staff who need to move data around will be encouraged
to do so via an internal network.

The decree banning removable storage acknowledges that complying
with it could be "disruptive".

Losing data

.... more ....


The company I worked for banned them many years ago - for reasons of
(a) concern of theft of secure [either in the government (it was a
defence contractor) or commercial sense] material, and (b) fear of
infection.

Exactly. Same with the little 150K employee computer company I
worked
for. As soon as USB ports showed up on computers, they were made
inoperable. (No card-readers at that time.) That was well before the
year 2000.

Many years ago I used to service some data equipment at a defense
contractor site. I was required to leave my calculator at the security
check-in desk for the same reason. This was long before USB ever came
into existence. And of course, there is the most popular story floating
around about the banning of Furbies, due to their small memory function.
Data loss concerns have been around for a long, long time.

In article , Frank Slootweg
wrote:


The company I worked for banned them many years ago - for reasons of (a)
concern of theft of secure [either in the government (it was a defence
contractor) or commercial sense] material, and (b) fear of infection.

Exactly. Same with the little 150K employee computer company I worked
for. As soon as USB ports showed up on computers, they were made
inoperable. (No card-readers at that time.) That was well before the
year 2000.

there weren't very many usb peripherals 'well before the year 2000' so
disabling the usb ports didn't make much of a difference.

meanwhile, ethernet ports remained active...

nospam wrote:
In article , Frank Slootweg
wrote:

The company I worked for banned them many years ago - for reasons of (a)
concern of theft of secure [either in the government (it was a defence
contractor) or commercial sense] material, and (b) fear of infection.
Exactly. Same with the little 150K employee computer company I worked
for. As soon as USB ports showed up on computers, they were made
inoperable. (No card-readers at that time.) That was well before the
year 2000.

there weren't very many usb peripherals 'well before the year 2000' so
disabling the usb ports didn't make much of a difference.

meanwhile, ethernet ports remained active...

You know that Ethernet ports can be blocked, right ?

A manager at work learned this the hard way. The IT department
would only schedule a workstation move, for a date a few weeks
into the future. The newly minted manager said "come on, you lads,
and help me move this computer" (the gentleman was an "I don't
take No for an answer" type).

The routers were set up with MAC filtering, so "strange" Ethernet
devices would be ignored. And sure enough, upon connecting the
machine and booting... "no network" was the result.

So sure, it may look like an Ethernet port, but you'd better
have good knowledge of what MAC address to appropriate before
that connection is going to work. That's why they buy equipment
with features like that, just to make a damn nuisance of
themselves with it :-) We all had a good chuckle about
the "test results", and had to drive all the equipment back
up the hall again afterwards.

If a party doing industrial espionage had an insider who
could collect MAC addresses, they could probably manage
to bypass that feature. It's not like the method is
"Fort Knox" or anything. But at the time, it was pretty funny
that a legit employee move could be blocked that way.

Paul

In article , Paul
wrote:

The company I worked for banned them many years ago - for reasons of (a)
concern of theft of secure [either in the government (it was a defence
contractor) or commercial sense] material, and (b) fear of infection.
Exactly. Same with the little 150K employee computer company I worked
for. As soon as USB ports showed up on computers, they were made
inoperable. (No card-readers at that time.) That was well before the
year 2000.

there weren't very many usb peripherals 'well before the year 2000' so
disabling the usb ports didn't make much of a difference.

meanwhile, ethernet ports remained active...

You know that Ethernet ports can be blocked, right ?

of course, except that would make the computer rather useless.

the point is that blocking usb ports, especially at a time when there
weren't very many usb devices available (as in almost nothing, it was
usb 1.0 days), while leaving everything else wide open, is completely
pointless.

A manager at work learned this the hard way. The IT department
would only schedule a workstation move, for a date a few weeks
into the future. The newly minted manager said "come on, you lads,
and help me move this computer" (the gentleman was an "I don't
take No for an answer" type).

The routers were set up with MAC filtering, so "strange" Ethernet
devices would be ignored. And sure enough, upon connecting the
machine and booting... "no network" was the result.

finding a valid mac address and spoofing it is incredibly trivial.

mac address filtering is a very big clue that the sysadmins do not
understand anything about network security.

nospam wrote:
In article , Frank Slootweg
wrote:

The company I worked for banned them many years ago - for reasons of (a)
concern of theft of secure [either in the government (it was a defence
contractor) or commercial sense] material, and (b) fear of infection.

Exactly. Same with the little 150K employee computer company I worked
for. As soon as USB ports showed up on computers, they were made
inoperable. (No card-readers at that time.) That was well before the
year 2000.

there weren't very many usb peripherals 'well before the year 2000' so
disabling the usb ports didn't make much of a difference.

Huh? The discussion is about USB (memory) sticks!

meanwhile, ethernet ports remained active...

Duh! Yes, they were quite handy to connect to our *intra*net, thank
you very much! And yes, our Internet gateways were very secure/strict,
TYVM. (Think NET-15 (and -16.)

In article , Frank Slootweg
wrote:

The company I worked for banned them many years ago - for reasons of
(a) concern of theft of secure [either in the government (it was a defence
contractor) or commercial sense] material, and (b) fear of infection.

Exactly. Same with the little 150K employee computer company I worked
for. As soon as USB ports showed up on computers, they were made
inoperable. (No card-readers at that time.) That was well before the
year 2000.

there weren't very many usb peripherals 'well before the year 2000' so
disabling the usb ports didn't make much of a difference.

Huh? The discussion is about USB (memory) sticks!

which didn't exist 'well before the year 2000'.

usb 1.1 was finalized in late 1998 and started to become popular in
1999 as manufacturers ramped up.

usb 1.0 and win95 'support' did exist before that, but it was more of a
technology demo than actual products.

according to wikipedia, the first usb memory stick was available in
mid-december, 2000, so really 2001 when people could buy them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_flash_drive#History
USB flash drives were invented at M-Systems, an Israeli company, in a
US patent filed in April 5, 1999 by Amir Ban, Dov Moran and Oron
Ogdan, all M-Systems employees at the time. The product was
announced by the company in September 2000, and was first sold by
IBM in 8MB capacity starting December 15, 2000.

meanwhile, ethernet ports remained active...

Duh! Yes, they were quite handy to connect to our *intra*net, thank
you very much! And yes, our Internet gateways were very secure/strict,
TYVM. (Think NET-15 (and -16.)

connect a rogue device to the intranet. done. spoof mac address (easy)
and it will go unnoticed by the admins.

if data theft and malware infection was truly a concern, they'd need to
disable floppy drives and pcmcia slots. did they?

disabling usb was nothing more than fear of the unknown.