The US Army said it would ban the use of removable drives including UBS flash drives, CD's and media cards to prevent the spread of a worm.
Service members of the US Army have been ordered to cease usage of all USB and removable drive media devices until they can be properly scanned for malware. The commander of U.S. Strategic Command has issues this order to take place immediately mainly due to a serious threat of a worm infection. The worm threat is known to be spread through removable media. This threat is very dangerous and starting to spread at in increasing rate.
The worm was identified as Agent-BTZ, a variant of the SillyFDC worm by security researchers.
The last thing that any the US government needs is a serious worm infection spreading amongst one of their military branches. This may slow down many of the service men from accessing personal files but it is always better to be safe than sorry. I am sure one of the brave soldiers would not feel very good about being the culprit of spreading worm through a network belonging to the US Army. It is bad enough that these guys have to worry about staying alive in the battlefield, they don't need any additional pressure put on them.
[image source: 5tharmy.army.mil]
The message delivered from the commander of U.S. Strategic Command specifies the extent of this suspension and the possible consequences of the order if it is not followed.
The message reads:
To make sure troops and military civilians are observing the suspension, government security teams "will be conducting daily scans and running custom scripts on NIPRNET and SIPRNET to ensure the commercial malware has not been introduced," an e-mail says. "Any discovery of malware will result in the opening of a security incident report and will be referred to the appropriate security officer for action."
This same instance may apply to home users or business computer users when using removable media. It is always best to utilize a malware scan tool, antivirus or antispyware software to detect and remove parasites on removable media.