Human Stupidity Trumps Cybersecurity in Test of Government Workers

If you found a USB drive or an unmarked CD in your driveway or office parking lot, would you immediately insert it into your computer?

Hopefully not, but that's exactly what 60 percent of people did in a test conducted by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The test was leaked to Bloomberg News, and has not yet been released.

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By the way, the test subjects were all government employees.

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Unfortunately for their IT departments, the DHS test, conducted earlier this year in government building and private contractor parking lots, revealed an even scarier truth about human gullibility and how it could lead to dangerous security breaches.

If the USB drive or CD case was emblazoned with an official logo, the subjects installed 90 percent of them.

As Mark Rasch, director of network security and privacy consulting for Computer Science Corp., told Bloomberg News, "There's no device known to mankind that will prevent people from being idiots."

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