The question here is obviously if this is enough to justify running yet another background program 24/7 on the computer system. This really depends on the user in question. If you regularly add and remove removable devices and media from a computer system – talking about multiple times a day at least – then you might want to consider using the software. If you only do it once a week the software program feels like an overkill.

The feature can be enabled for CD Rom drives, removable media, fixed drives, network drives and ram drives. The application will sit quietly in the Windows System Tray and spawn a desktop shortcut immediately after one of the selected devices has been connected to the computer system. It will also remove the shortcut again if the device is disconnected from the system.

Desk Drive requires the Microsoft .net Framework and uses up to 18 Megabytes of computer memory while running. That’s a lot of memory and it should influence the decision whether to run Desk Drive or not heavily.

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The ban which was issued directly by the commander of U.S. Strategic Command applies to both the secret SIPR and unclassified NIPR nets and includes all removable media including removable hard drives, USB sticks, recordable disks and even floppy disks.

The computer worm that lead to the ban has been identified as a virus called Agent.btz which is a variation of the SillyFDC worm which spreads by copying itself on removable media that gets connected to the computer system.

The article reveals several interesting – some would say scary – insights. The computer worm known as Agent.btz is known by most antivirus databases for months at least which leads to the conclusion that the worm is either a variant that cannot be detected yet or that the US Military is running ineffective antivirus software in parts of their computer systems.

The second interesting tidbit is that it seems that personally owned, that is non-authorized devices have not been banned in the past.

Eventually, some government-approved drives will be allowed back under certain “mission-critical,” but unclassified, circumstances. “Personally owned or non-authorized devices” are “prohibited” from here on out.

One could argue that non-authorized devices are automatically banned but the system does not seem to have been that effective if a computer work relying on removable media has spread across the networks.

Now imagine if this would not be just a random well known virus but a planned attack by sophisticated computer hackers knowing what they were doing.. Scary? Yes.

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