This is why you don't borrow other peoples flash drive

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mvbighead

Diamond Member
Apr 20, 2009
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If it's my own, personal USB thumbdrive then I won't bother labelling it simply because I have no real reason to. I wouldn't knowingly hand such a USB thumbdrive out either.

In the case of giving it to a friend for their own personal machine it the blame would be shared.

I am guessing you must have done what the OP has done. Shared blame? You can't possibly be serious. What you are basically saying is that if you know how to use a flash drive, you must have the know how to create an unattended install.

Any jack ass can plug in a flash drive. Any jack ass can reboot a computer. But not every jack ass knows what is happening when his system starts booting to something other than his intended OS.

Personal accountability... you seem to have none.
 

ch33zw1z

Lifer
Nov 4, 2004
38,157
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If the buck stops with the user then the IT department isn't worth a penny.

Maybe they aren't. And that could very well be a contributing factor to this unfortunate situation. But to remove all blame from the OP is wrong. Know wtf you're doing. If you have a device laying around that's capable of doing this type of damage, then label it/hide it/do something that reminds you "oh yea, this can wipe out entire partitions or hdd's, gee maybe I won't hand this out to people"
 

mvbighead

Diamond Member
Apr 20, 2009
3,793
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It's really, really, REALLY simple to stop people booting to USB devices - put a password on the BIOS. Job done. If the BIOS isn't password protected then it is the IT department's fault.

The OP is perfectly entitled to have what content he likes on a USB stick and is also perfectly entitled to not label them.

He's also perfectly entitled to fuck over anyone he hands that device to apparently.
 

Veliko

Diamond Member
Feb 16, 2011
3,597
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Malicious - having or showing a desire to cause harm to someone

Something that destroys data on a disk without user intervention is indeed malicious in my book. It's not much different than a virus that would go through and wipe out any *.doc or *.xls files. It's actually worse than that, as it wipes out EVERYTHING. In that specific context, it is 100% malicious.

You are going against the very definition of malicious that you yourself posted.

By having a non-prompted OS installer on the drive I am not showing or having any desire to cause harm to someone.
 

mvbighead

Diamond Member
Apr 20, 2009
3,793
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You are going against the very definition of malicious that you yourself posted.

By having a non-prompted OS installer on the drive I am not showing or having any desire to cause harm to someone.

Viruses are considered malicious, no? Malicious means to cause harm to someone (or something).

A non-prompted OS installer wipes data on disks. Deleting data is considered malicious when done so by a virus. I see no reason why that does not correlate to an OS installer running on someone else's personal or business computer.

It is 100% causing harm to their systems. It 100% shows cause to harm their system as it will do a OS installation without user intervention.

At this point, you seem to be playing devil's advocate just to be playing devil's advocate.
 

Veliko

Diamond Member
Feb 16, 2011
3,597
127
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I am guessing you must have done what the OP has done. Shared blame? You can't possibly be serious. What you are basically saying is that if you know how to use a flash drive, you must have the know how to create an unattended install.

Any jack ass can plug in a flash drive. Any jack ass can reboot a computer. But not every jack ass knows what is happening when his system starts booting to something other than his intended OS.

Personal accountability... you seem to have none.

You don't seem to understand the difference between personal accountability and exclusive accountability.
 

Veliko

Diamond Member
Feb 16, 2011
3,597
127
106
Viruses are considered malicious, no? Malicious means to cause harm to someone (or something).

A non-prompted OS installer wipes data on disks. Deleting data is considered malicious when done so by a virus. I see no reason why that does not correlate to an OS installer running on someone else's personal or business computer.

It is 100% causing harm to their systems. It 100% shows cause to harm their system as it will do a OS installation without user intervention.

At this point, you seem to be playing devil's advocate just to be playing devil's advocate.

If you are honestly saying that you don't see any difference between a virus and a non-prompt OS installer this conversation isn't worth continuing.
 

mvbighead

Diamond Member
Apr 20, 2009
3,793
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If you are honestly saying that you don't see any difference between a virus and a non-prompt OS installer this conversation isn't worth continuing.

If you're telling me you don't understand the concept of data loss, this conversation isn't worth continuing.
 

davmat787

Diamond Member
Nov 30, 2010
5,512
24
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Viruses are considered malicious, no? Malicious means to cause harm to someone (or something).

A non-prompted OS installer wipes data on disks. Deleting data is considered malicious when done so by a virus. I see no reason why that does not correlate to an OS installer running on someone else's personal or business computer.

It is 100% causing harm to their systems. It 100% shows cause to harm their system as it will do a OS installation without user intervention.

At this point, you seem to be playing devil's advocate just to be playing devil's advocate.

Viruses are malicious by design. An unnattended slipstream USB/DVD disk is not as it is intended to install a clean OS by design. This assumes the user wants to of course, the mistake was in the OP accidentally given it to his GF, as he has owned up to. The harm as you put it is a byproduct of the unnattended install, harm caused by viruses is by design.

Besides, there are much easier ways to wipe someones system than creating an unnattended slipstream install image on USB.

I think some people are trying to make this into a court proceeding. :awe:

edit: BTW, is your link to your Asus router for sale broken? Just takes me to the forum root.
 

mvbighead

Diamond Member
Apr 20, 2009
3,793
1
81
Viruses are malicious by design. An unnattended slipstream USB/DVD disk is not as it is intended to install a clean OS by design. This assumes the user wants to of course, the mistake was in the OP accidentally given it to his GF, as he has owned up to. The harm as you put it is a byproduct of the unnattended install, harm caused by viruses is by design.

Besides, there are much easier ways to wipe someones system than creating an unnattended slipstream install image on USB.

I think some people are trying to make this into a court proceeding. :awe:

edit: BTW, is your link to your Asus router for sale broken? Just takes me to the forum root.

The point really is that the device is intended to perform a format and installation of software. While not "designed" to be malicious, when used in the wrong system, it is most certainly that.

On the sale thread - Yeah, when they updated the software I didn't have something in my profile which caused them to lock my for sale thread. I just never went about rebuilding it.
 

mvbighead

Diamond Member
Apr 20, 2009
3,793
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Like the IT department should take responsibility for not properly setting up the computers.

Or like his GF should accept responsibility for not following company policy in regards to USB devices.

Or like the OP should accept responsibility for handing out a harmful USB device.

FTFY.

All parts have some amount of responsibility. But it starts with the OP, IMO.
 

DrunkenSano

Diamond Member
Aug 8, 2008
3,892
490
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This is the problem with America these days, too many people not wiling to man up to responsibility and when something goes wrong, fingers are quickly pointed elsewhere. A sad state this country is in.
 

gsellis

Diamond Member
Dec 4, 2003
6,061
0
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Viruses are malicious by design. An unnattended slipstream USB/DVD disk is not as it is intended to install a clean OS by design. This assumes the user wants to of course, the mistake was in the OP accidentally given it to his GF, as he has owned up to. The harm as you put it is a byproduct of the unnattended install, harm caused by viruses is by design.

Besides, there are much easier ways to wipe someones system than creating an unnattended slipstream install image on USB.

I think some people are trying to make this into a court proceeding. :awe:
This is my winner of the thread. What a frigging pissing match.

A) Unless it is a wireless controller for a device such as a mouse, it is never recommended to boot off of it. Non-IT folks don't know it, which is why they hire IT folks. I personally like the salary because not everyone can be an IT person.

B) The IT boyfriend let her borrow it, so she assumed it was safe. (and he confesses).

C) Anyone who remembers everything on their USB keys does not need USB keys. And the writing/labels rubs off. I carry 3 and use 5 and they are all physically different. I 'think' the white one has my 64bit Vista boot. and I think my resume is on the Tufin one. No promises.

D) Social Engineering 102 - want to own a company - put your malware package on a bunch of USB keys branded with the company name on them. Drop them outside the headquarters. They don't even need to boot on it. Ownership begins in 5... 4... 3...

E) There is no 'safe' boot order. You could protect yourself with a CD or PXE boot that scans before the HD starts... can be circumvented. The HD is assumed safe IF you have layers of defense, but most don't. So if breached, a really good rootkit gets in before the local layers of defense. But for generic sets, yes, it should be HDD. But when you get into the higher managed sets, it may not even boot of the System partition. If you don't have physical security, it never matters anyway. The moment you hand the computer to someone else, included the intended users, it is already at risk ;)

I quit being to OS guy before USB keys became an option. Sure wish I had an USB boot installer. It sure would have saved a huge amount of time testing unattended installs. The CDs and later DVDs were SLOW and a bug fix required a new write to media. I am sure I toasted at least 500 discs starting from NT 4 to XP. And I walked to work, uphill, both ways, 40 miles, in the snow, on the interstate.

But freaking LIGHTEN UP. It is not a court room. :D (well, it is ATOT - which is worse :) )
 
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AlienCraft

Lifer
Nov 23, 2002
10,539
0
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So did the OP. Two wrongs don't make a right :)
:thumbsup: This equation is not an either / or , it is an AND.
OP not taking responsibility for his unlabeled, no prompt installation drive is as bad as leaving a virus collection on an unlabeled CDROM out on a desk somewhere.
 

AlienCraft

Lifer
Nov 23, 2002
10,539
0
0
This is the problem with America these days, too many people not wiling to man up to responsibility and when something goes wrong, fingers are quickly pointed elsewhere. A sad state this country is in.
:thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup: Shame lost to self esteem.
 

Lonyo

Lifer
Aug 10, 2002
21,938
6
81
FTFY.

All parts have some amount of responsibility. But it starts with the OP, IMO.

No it doesn't, unless it's a knife and a small child.
Replace USB drive with knife, and GF with small child, and laptop with body part, and you might have a case for the OP being responsible in some way.

But flash drive + adult human + laptop? No.
 
Dec 26, 2007
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Why exactly is that rubbish? I fail to see your point. If I created such a boot device, handed it to my wife for her personal use, and she wiped out her PC by rebooting it with the USB stick, I would take full responsibility for losing all the data on her machine.

Personal accountability. If you have needs for a device as destructive as that, fine. But don't forget about it when you're done using it. You're liable to fuck up someone's day entirely.

First, I don't randomly boot from my own usb drives before checking them in a booted OS first. Hell there could be drivers or a BIOS updater on there that I forgot about. It's stupid to *assume* a USB drive is EVER safe from a security stance. With flash drives you either A) know everything that's on them at all times and never loan them out to others or B) assume no flash drive is safe and check it prior to having it in at boot. I prefer the second option.

Secondly, I'm the one that handles all of her tech stuff like laptop at home. All files are stored on a centralized WHS machine that is backed up (and has a copy stored on a HD in the storage unit that I backup critical files to every month or so). So because of this she doesn't have anything on her laptop that would be lost from it. Oh, and her laptop isn't set to boot from usb devices in the BIOS for this reason as well. I change all PC's of mine to boot from HD first and disable all other options once it's up and running. It takes an extra 45 seconds to change it if I need to reformat in the future, and saves me hassles from booting from USB/CD/DVD drives when I forget something bootable is connected to the system.

Finally, it's not intentionally "destructive" where malice is involved. If I had known she was going to leave the flash drive in at boot, then I would have warned her to make sure to not have it in at boot because it might have other stuff on it (since I know that I have used those drives for that in the past). I made the mistake of assuming she was using it on already booted systems to transfer files between them, which wouldn't have mattered if I had a bootable part of the drive or not.

OP is an ass and a terrible boyfriend.

Very true I'm sure, but not for the reasons listed in this thread.

:thumbsup: This equation is not an either / or , it is an AND.
OP not taking responsibility for his unlabeled, no prompt installation drive is as bad as leaving a virus collection on an unlabeled CDROM out on a desk somewhere.

Perhaps you skipped reading the thread, but I acknowledged that it was my mistake for letting her borrow it without checking it knowing that I have had unattended slipstreams on flash drives in the past. However, I had to leave for work (she asked last minute) and I didn't honestly think, "hey what if she has the flash drive in the system at boot on her work system where the IT dept allows bootable usb drives?"