Fergie's Tech Blog

'Thumb Drives Are Like Unsafe Sex'

Bob Brewin writes on GovExec:

That's the view of Joel Brenner, national counter-intelligence executive, who said he views the use of thumb drives on national security information systems as "the electronic equivalent of unprotected sex and the biggest sources of what I call ETDs, or electronically transmitted diseases."

Brenner, who was speaking at the 4th annual Multi-INT conference, sponsored by the Institute for Defense and Government Advancement in Vienna, Va., said [.pdf] thumb drives allow potential spies to steal more data than any spy in history, such as Aldrich Ames, Christopher Boyce, or Andrew Daulton Lee, who had to laboriously copy paper files before handing them over to Soviet intelligence agents.

Today, Brenner said, "You can walk into may corporate and government offices, slip a thumb drive into a USB port and download in seconds more information than all those traitors stole together. We've come a long way from Whittaker Chambers stuffing information in a hollow pumpkin."

posted by Fergie @ 3/02/2009 05:12:00 PM