Malware spread by memory stick

john_s_2

Quick update to the above. My daughter's USB stick got infected at school again today. (We're almost certain it's her school cos the computers here are reporting as clean and she's sure she hasn't used it anywhere else.)

The school computer kept warning her it had a virus.

Anyway, I plugged it into my PC (which I had protected from autorunning it as described in my earlier post). Nothing happened (which I expected). I quickly scanned it with AVG Free: it reported the virus and deleted it.

A quick scan of my PC showed it hadn't jumped onto my PC. Which I expected as I'd prevented autorunning.

A bit more Googling has also yielded how to protect your USB sticks from being infected in the first place.

Using DOS navigate to the stick (typing its drive letter, which Windows Explorer will show you), and run the following:

mkdir autorun.inf
attrib +a +s +r +h autorun.inf

It creates a folder called autorun.inf and sets its attributes (among others) to be read-only. Any attempt to Save As a file with this name will merely open this folder and offer to save it in there instead. An attempt to copy and paste such a file will be prevented as it will report that it can't overwrite the folder with the same name (as it is read-only).

For belt & braces save an empty autorun.inf file in the autorun.inf folder and set its attributes to read-only. Any attempt to save a file called autorun.inf in this folder won't be allowed (as it can't overwrite the read-only file with the same name).

The other attributes hide the folder so you won't even know it's there (with usual Windows Explorer settings).

http://www.theeldergeek.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=34434

I'll report back if this is successful at the school. I'm expecting my daughter to get error messages when she plugs it into a PC that has the virus.

As for the school clearing their PCs of this virus... Well, I can't prove it's them just yet. But I wouldn't hold out much hope, even if I could.

-TangleFoot-

Might this help?

dogmaryxx

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john_s_2

Looks useful. I suspect it does what I've done, but in one easy package.

I've posted the above in case anyone else thinks it sounds like something they'd want to do. I wouldn't want to say I'd recommend it as I don't think I know enough about such things to make such a recommendation.

I would suggest that people do seriously consider using this Panda tool though. Especially if they have 'random' people sticking memory sticks into their PC, or stick their own sticks into random PCs.