Flash Drives and Malware

[Circuit]

We here at the shop have an ongoing debate about usb flash drives being able to harbor malware (smitfraud, vundu, virtumond, etc...) can a simple flash drive harbor such malware, and what about the U3 smart dives, can they?
By harbor I mean hold an active malware the will transmit to another computer upon insertion into the usb port , not just hold an infected file.

 

[kimsland]

They can all hold Virus/Malware
But they can not do anything, like hurt files on the USB drive or anything
They need Windows for that (or some other OS)

The real issue is when the drive is mounted and they autorun
But if autorun is off, again they cannot hurt anything

Until you access it ! (through Windows)