I used one of the school's laptops for my lecture yesterday, for only the second time this term. There was this spreadsheet file that I was supposed to let the students copy, but they didn't want to, because they knew the laptop was infected with several replicating files [autorun etc. as well as one hiding inside a recycle folder it created in my thumb drive].
It was easy enough to plug the drive in one of the faculty room's linux machines to delete the files, except the recycle bin was protected.
I was planning to reformat the drive already, but when I plugged it into a windows machine, the OS said it needed administrator login to install the "new hardware".
It might have been the file trying to replicate itself. So the computer had to be remote accessed by the ITC personnel, after which the file was detected. It could not be deleted though so it was moved to the vault where it would do no further harm.
Lesson: surprisingly enough, don't use the school laptops anymore.
No comments:
Post a Comment