The Australia’s Victoria Police Force reported this week about a tiny number of storage units have been found in mailboxes of residents in a suburb of Pakenham. The result of curiosity some recipients have experienced firsthand the cost of connecting an element of this type to a computer without knowing what is inside or from where it came from. However, the Police described that the contents of the USB flash drives were found “extremely damaging and dangerous” and also added that residents who connected them to their computers have already experienced “serious problems”. The warning, published on the official website of the Victoria Police, one of Australia’s state police departments, investigated that, “Members of the public are allegedly finding unmarked USB drives in their letterboxes. Upon inserting the USB drives into their computers victims have experienced fraudulent media streaming service offers, as well as other serious issues [malware]. The USB drives are believed to be extremely harmful and members of the public are urged to avoid plugging them into their computers or other devices”. It is not yet known who is behind these mysterious deliveries. But it is clear that curiosity is not always a good companion. A study conducted in the United States earlier this year presumed that almost half of the 297 USB sticks were placed randomly on a university campus which were actually connected to different computers. Therefore, the hackers can easily use all these devices as a clean way to infect more computers simply to hack them. Basically, these USBs were loaded with malware that infects the system without user’s knowledge. Moreover, this malware could access certain personal information that could be found on the computer or even it could also lock your computer until you have paid a kind of ransom. Even, it may also contain malicious software which once activated then it can read keystrokes, giving access to the names of users along with the passwords and other sensitive information as well. As the possibilities are endless, hence, it is much better to take early safety measures simply to avoid all these data breaches or hackings. If any of you find or receive any unknown USB stick in the postbox or anywhere else, then beware and make sure you don’t plug it into your laptop or computer or the only place you should go is to the trash to get rid of it without hesitation.
