Security risks of removable media (was: Offline Search?)

[Thomas Charron]

On Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 4:18 PM, Ben Scott <dragonhawk at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 2:46 PM, Thomas Charron <twaffle at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>  Well, if we assume the computer is offline (which we've been asked
>>> to do)... and the software isn't on the drive... what good is having
>>> the search engine data going to do?  :)
>>  Umm, I don't see that requirement anywhere in the thread.  Did I
>> miss something?
>  Well, the subject line, and the first sentence of the original post,
> both mention "offline search".  I finda figured that meant it needed
> to work offline.  I suppose one could insist on an offline search
> despite being online, though that seems somewhat masochistic.

  Google Desktop isn't an online service.  :-D  It interfaces with
google online, true, but it functions locally, offline.

>>  Any sort of end user controlled exchange of files and/or data is
>> also a big security risk.
>  I would think the OP can presumably trust himself to not steal his
> own data from himself.  In contrast, there actually *is* a huge
> malware problem.  It's not hypothetical.  It also causes real damage.
> (Example: Reportedly, the vast majority of spam comes from
> malware-compromised machines.)

  No argument there Ben.  What I'm saying is, ANY sort of file
exchange can lead to Malware/Trojans/Virii.

>>  They put themselves at even greater risk just USING the compromised
>> PC.
>  You're missing the point.  The very scenario under discussion is
> carrying around removable media to use in arbitrary PCs[1].  If you
> want to state flat out that you shouldn't use untrusted PCs -- and to
> me, that's an extremely smart idea -- then why are you carrying
> removable media to use with the untrusted PCs?

  Because I'm a software engineer.  :-D  I get paid for stuff that
will be on these sorts of machines, of all flavors.

> [1] If the PCs were all trusted and under one's own control, one could
> presumably just install the damn software and dispense with the
> removable media.

  The software has to get there somehow.  :-D  We're not really
disagreeing here.  If data comes into a system from the outside, be it
network, thumb drive, or translated via IP-Over-Carrier-Pigeon, the
suspect 'alien' stuff is suspect.

-- 
-- Thomas