pepoluan: The IT Guy

First of all, an apology for not posting sooner. I've been unbelievably exhausted the past 2 days ... I just regained my energy today

Alright. In this edition of WinPowerTip, I will share how to protect your USB Flash Disk (UFD) from virus infection, without installing any software in your computer and/or UFD.

So, how do I do it? Read the whole story after the jump

Follow up:

The most common computer virus infection nowadays is through a UFD. There are 2 ways a virus can infect your computers via a UFD.

Method #1: The vires infects by writing its own "autorun.inf" file in the root directory of the UFD. The result, when the UFD is plugged into the USB port, Windows will immediately execute the program referred by the "autorun.inf" file. Thus, the virus gets executed, and your computer gets infected.

Method #2: The virus hides the folders in the Flash Disk, and copies itself as a new program using the same name, and with the same icon as a folder. The unaware user might think that he/she is double-clicking on a folder, while in reality he/she is double-clicking on the virus.

In my opinion, the first method is much more serious than the second method. The second method requires an active interaction from the user (i.e., double-click). A careful user (e.g., one who always explore using "Details" mode) is very unlikely to be infected.

On the other hand, the first method requires no user interaction besides the act of plugging a UFD into the USB port. If the AutoRun feature is enabled, this simple act is enough to execute the virus. Yes, the user can (and should) prevent AutoRun from executing by holding the Shift button. But the user might forgot, or his/her finger might slip, thus resulting in... the virus successfully executes and infects our computer. Besides, opening a UFD by double-clicking the UFD's icon in the My Computer view... will still execute the autorun.inf file.

Since the infection risk via autorun.inf is very great, why not prevent infection by 'vaccinating' the infection vector? Or in other words, let's prevent our UFD from being infected on the first place.

How do we do it? After doing some research, I can split the infection-prevention strategy to several levels:

• Level 1 Prevention: Prevent the creation of autorun.inf
• Level 2 Prevention: Prevent the protection folder from deletion using Unicode
• Level 3 Prevention: Prevent the protection folder from being deleted using "Unerasable Folder"

Interested? Read on

Pages: 1 · 2 · 3 · 4