kitjohnson

Sorry if I'm posting to the wrong forum...

I live in Thailand and USB flash drive viruses are rife. They don't pose any problem to me, as I use my own laptop and Avast Antivirus stops all threats from other people's dirty USB flash drives.

However, for my friends who aren't too computer-savvy and who also don't own their own computers, it's more of a problem. They are using various computers day-to-day that usually are packed with viruses. Their flash drives in time become packed with viruses too.

Is there any software that can be installed on a USB flash drive to protect it from threats from the computer? I've had a look around and have not found too much.

Thanks for any help.
Kit

amateur

Hello and welcome to TSF.

This tool will protect both the flash drive and the PC by disabling the autorun feature. Disabling autorun won't prevent infected files from getting into your removable drive but it does prevent these files from launching automatically. Without getting launched, these infected files lie dormant on the drive, and are pretty much harmless unless you double click on them.

Run this tool on all usb drives and computers:

Please download Flash_Disinfector.exe by sUBs and save it to your desktop:

• Double-click Flash_Disinfector.exe to run it.
• Follow any prompts that may appear.
• Wait until the program has finished scanning, then please exit the program.

The tool may ask you to insert your flash drive, or other removable drives. Please do so and allow the tool to clean it up as well.

snemelk

I won't agree here... I find Avast!'s detection of this type of threat very poor... Some very simple infections spreading this way were not detected by it for a very long time...
Maybe this has improved, however, I wouldn't trust an antivirus (any AV) at all when I plug in a removable device...

The first thing to be done is to disable Autorun - Flash_Disinfector will do it... However, I do prefer other programs which can do this - like Panda USB Vaccine or Autorun Protector...
The second thing is to have an undeleteable autorun.inf file/folder on a removable device, so that infection won't spread... All three mentioned programs can do that - choose which you prefer...

Take a look at my page for more information...

You would have to run it when your removable device or computer is probably already infected - too late... Also, as I mentioned earlier, I wouldn't trust any AV here - they can only remove known threats (some also catched with heuristics)...

kitjohnson

Many thanks for the replies.

I'm not sure if Avast is technically good or bad, but I do know that it picks up a fair amount of viruses spread on our university networks and removable media. As as result, I never have virus problems...so it works for me!

I have downloaded the recommended software.

'Flash disinfector' feels strange - no options, no information about what it's doing, just "done". I like to feel a bit more in control.

I liked "Autorun protector", and let's see if the autorun.inf file it created is really indestructible.

I'll give the Panda one a go if the others fail.

Many thanks, once again, I do appreciate your help.
Kit

Baejung92

I've felt similar when using Flash Disinfector before, but as it wasn't "cleaning" anything at the time (I used it to disable autorun) I couldn't really be sure if anything would be different during actual disinfection...