I have finished watching the 2nd season of House of Cards, and I'm appalled. The show really is fantastic, however let me get down straight to the point - computer-wise, how realistic is the show? Gavin Orsay, a hacker and informant for the FBI created a USB stick for the The Washington Herald reporter Lucas Goodwin, which contained malicious code that would be automatically injected into any machine when plugged in.
- Theoretically, is this possible?
Not that I would want to do something like that, I'm just interested... And I'm not talking about autorun.infs, I mean real code that would be able to penetrate into a system, a virus, essentially. And if there was to be such a virus, would it be able to inject itself cross-platform? i.e. do the same amount of damage both on Windows, Unix, Linux distros etc.
This is not only possible it has been done many times. have a look at the Stuxnex virus developed by the United States to slow down Iran's uranium enrichment program.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet
As far as cross platform, the flash drive could have different versions of the same virus/trojan/worm compiled for different hardware and operating systems. Developing software like this is not a matter of "if" it can be done, it is a matter of how much time/money do you have to make it happen!