It was recently seen that this week, IBM had apologized for giving out USB drives at a security conference in Australia that included malware on them.

It was noticed that the thumb drives were distributed for free to people who came to the IBM booth at the AusCERT conference.

Glenn Wightwick, Chief Technologist at IBM Australia, wrote in a letter to AusCERT that they had discovered that some of the USB keys had malware and it was assumed by them that all USB keys would be affected.

"The malware is detected by the majority of current Anti Virus products [as at 20/05/2010] and been known since 2008. The malware is known by a number of names and is contained in the setup. exe and autorun. ini files. It is spread when the infected USB device is inserted into a Microsoft Windows workstation or server whereby the setup. exe and autorun. ini files run automatically", said the letter.

Some of the steps removing the malware were mentioned in the letter. People were asked to turn off system restore, update antivirus software, and perform scanning by using a second antivirus product and back up all important files on the system before the reinstallation of the operating system was done.