

US agency baffled by modern technology, destroys mice to get rid of viruses - akandiah
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/07/us-agency-baffled-by-modern-technology-destroys-mice-to-get-rid-of-viruses/

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christo
You could totally put computer virus malware in a mouse!

A USB connected device could not only be a mouse, but running, say, an Arduino
or similar, record sound, broadcast data wirelessly (even over cellular
networks), and respond to an external remote control.

It could enter keystrokes into the computer. It could open a shell, pipe
arbitrary data into a file, execute the file as an application and communicate
over USB serial with the application on the computer.

Another example: [http://hackaday.com/2013/01/26/extracting-data-with-usb-
hid/](http://hackaday.com/2013/01/26/extracting-data-with-usb-hid/)

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Shivetya
The official report in PDF form is at
[http://www.oig.doc.gov/OIGPublications/OIG-13-027-A.pdf](http://www.oig.doc.gov/OIGPublications/OIG-13-027-A.pdf)

Worrisome is that they got so far before someone put a stop to it. I wonder
how widespread such thinking, or lack thereof, is?

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ars
The solution here (if you want to solve this) is go work there!

Apply for jobs at clueless government agencies and solve the problem from the
inside. Not just this agency, FBI, NSA, CIA - all the agencies you love to
criticize.

Regulatory capture also works in a different way: The people who are most
interested in something are the ones who will work on it. So environmental
boards (for example) get "captured" by environmental extremists since they are
the ones most motivated to run. Then you get stupid laws like banning plastic
bags in favor of environmentally worse paper.

This is probably not the best option for a young "hotshot", but if you are a
bit older and want more stability in your life go apply at exactly the place
you most criticize.

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duncan_bayne
Devil's advocate here (I happen to agree that the agency is clueless): what if
they were concerned about cracked devices ... perhaps keyloggers, that sort of
thing?

They claim to have been concerned about espionage, perhaps hardware
destruction is a reasonable response.

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Yaa101
The CIO is a big idiot and should pay this out own pocket.

