The new threat in cyber attacks...

That would probably have been prevented if the autorun had been disabled.

See here: http://research.pandasecurity.com/panda-usb-and-autorun-vaccine/

 

The idea itself isn't new, it's just that it hasn't been common for awhile.

Back in the old days, when computers weren't hooked up to the Internet, the majority of viruses spread by floppy disk. Many of them had boot sector viruses, which they'd write into memory and the hard disk, and spread to any other floppies that were inserted into the system.

After people started connecting to the Internet, though, this kind of virus was largely forgotten about, as floppies faded into obscurity and non-writable optical media became the standard for data distribution. USB sticks have just reopened an old hole that was inadvertently closed by the trends of the times, and just as inadvertently reopened by them.

 

That's scary stuff