USB flash drives are our personal data carriers, but the way we use it to exchange files also makes them open to viruses.
The Achilles heel which viruses exploit is the autorun.inf file. Autorun.inf file is a simple instruction file present in removable media like CDs, DVDs and USB drives. This file contains a series of commands that triggers the operating system to start an executable, tells it which icon to use, and which additional actions to make available. A basic autorun.inf file looks like this – Read more…
Hackers broke into the University of California at Berkeley’s health services center computer and possibly stole the personal information of more than 160,000 students, alumni, and other people, the university declared Friday.
At particular risk of identity theft are some 97,000 individuals whose Social Security numbers were accessed in the breach, but it’s still unclear whether hackers were able to match up those SSNs with individual names, Shelton Waggener, UCB’s chief technology officer, said in a press conference Friday afternoon.
The attackers accessed a public Web site and then bypassed additional secured databases stored on the same server. In addition to SSNs, the databases contained health insurance information and non-treatment medical information, such as immunization records and names of doctors patients had seen. No medical records (i.e. patient diagnoses, treatments, and therapies) were taken, as they are stored in a separate system, emphasized Steve Lustig, associate vice chancellor for health and human services. Read more…
