In January 2022, the FBI issued a public warning over a USB attack campaign in which numerous USB drives, laced with malicious software, were sent to employees at organizations in the transportation, defense, and insurance sectors between August and November 2021. The USBs came with fake letters impersonating the Department of Health and Human Services and Amazon, sent via the U.S. Postal Service and UPS. The campaign has been dubbed “BadUSB,” and the FIN7 hacker organization has been named as the culprit. Here is what you need to know about BadUSB and mitigating the risks of this USB attack.
BadUSB definition
“The BadUSB attack provides the victim with what looks like a physical USB stick and a lure to plug it into the victim’s system, such as promising a gift card as a thank you or invoices that need to be processed,” explains Karl Sigler, senior security research manager at Trustwave SpiderLabs. His malware research team initially discovered the campaign in 2020 while examining a malicious thumb drive as part of a forensic investigation for a U.S. hospitality provider.