How the Story of a USB Penetration Test Went Viral

Twenty years ago, Dark Reading published a groundbreaking column about a penetration test where a security expert scattered rigged USB thumb drives in a credit union parking lot, successfully exploiting employee curiosity when workers plugged them into company computers. The article by Steve Stasiukonis became Dark Reading's first viral hit and remains a landmark story in cybersecurity journalism, demonstrating how human behavior can be the weakest link in security even before social engineering attacks became a widely recognized threat.