Pod Slurping Dangerous To Enterprises

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Monty Solomon <monty () roscom com>
Date: June 20, 2005 12:38:55 AM EDT
To: undisclosed-recipient:;
Subject: Pod Slurping Dangerous To Enterprises



Pod Slurping Dangerous To Enterprises

By TechWeb News
June 17, 2005 (3:43 PM EDT)

Nearly a year ago, an analyst from Gartner recommended that
enterprises should think about banning Apple's iPods -- and similar
small-sized portable storage devices -- for fear of data walking out
the door.

Now, with data being lost in more ways than once thought possible --
backup tapes lost by UPS, Social Security numbers sold to criminals,
and hackers breaking in to networks remotely -- a researcher has
demonstrated just how easy it is to walk off with megabytes of
sensitive material when armed with only the ubiquitous iPod and
simple software.

With more than 30 million iPods in circulation and models packing as
much as 30GB of storage space, the gizmo makes a perfect tool for
data theft, wrote computer security expert Abe Usher in his blog.

Dubbing the practice "pod slurping," Usher created a proof-of-concept
application that runs from an iPod that, when the device is connected
to a PC, will sniff through a PC's hard drive to find and copy all
the Microsoft Office documents it finds.

...

http://www.techweb.com/wire/security/164900847




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