Malware – the thing you don’t usually expect to get at security conference

AusCERT security conference may have gone well, but it still failed at certain point. Infected USB sticks were unintentionally given out at single presentation raising a question if the lecturers are really capable of discussing computer security. The malware was noticed pretty quickly and organizers recalled all the infected pieces as soon as the infection was found. However the reputation was lost: would you trust security experts that infected your machine accidentally?

According to researchers the malware was designed to run automatically when USB key is stuck to a computer. Although McAfee reported the infection having low risk; the incident still lowered the confidence of both the hosts and delegates. This may have influence to future conferences. There were up to up to 1200 attendees at AusCERT security conference this year, who could guess the number of delegates the next year?

This entry was posted on Monday, May 26th, 2008 at 6:50 am and is filed under News, Viruses and parasites, What's new. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.