The US Department of Defense revealed a virus has affected Pentagon computers, which has led it to enforce a ban on USB drives in the building.
“We are aware of a global virus for which there are some public alerts on. And we’ve seen some of this on our networks… we’re taking steps to identify and mitigate the virus,” Pentagon spokesperson Bryan Whitman said.
While officials have not disclosed which virus infected the computers, it must have been big – Pentagon computers are scanned for viruses millions of times each day.
But they aren’t taking any chances – a 17 November memo has issued the “immediate suspension” of flash drives used on computers connected to both classified and unclassified networks.
They may or may not be returned to their owners.