Super Fast Posted December 20, 2011 Share Posted December 20, 2011 I was working earlier on a solution to prevent autorun viruses on flash drives. After all, I had to visit a friend who had an XP machine with no antivirus. They had iTunes & other notorious memory hogs installed, & could not use an antivirus because they only have 256 MB ram. Which would stall their computer to unusable. Trouble is, they got an auto-run virus from school on their flash drive. Which infected their computer when they plugged it in. Which then infected mine when I plugged mine in. The virus would check if it exists on the flash drive, & rewrite itself back if you deleted it from the flash drive. AVG auto deleted it off my flash when I inserted it into mine, but I still wanted a way to protect my flash drive from auto-run based exploits. _____ Now, I thought about a few options to do that: - Buy a flash drive with a read only mode that blocks writes. * Problem 1 -> Expensive. * Problem 2 -> Hard-to-find. * Problem 3 -> Inconvenient to replace all 6 flash drives I have with that. - Write to every part of the free space on the flash drive (no virus can enter, because the drive is 100% full). * Problem 1 -> Viruses can still delete/change/modify files on the flash drive if they are advanced enough. * Problem 2 -> I still want to be able to add things & remove things, so that is a no-no as well. - Create an autorun that will auto import a registry key to turn off writing to the flash drive. * Problem 1 -> Flash drive must be removed, then re-inserted for this to work. * Problem 2 -> User may want to use auto-run, & now you have disabled it. * Problem 3 -> Only works in SP2 or higher of XP. - Create an autorun entry on the flash drive, with System/Read Only/Hidden attributes to block autorun viruses from replacing it. * Problem -> Advanced viruses could remove the attributes & over-write it anyway. _____ At this point, I am looking at different format options for the flash drive, including FAT/FAT 32/exFAT/NTFS from right-click format menu. Around this time, I also find something interesting. In Windows XP, it can read from a UDF formatted drive, but CANNOT write to it. Windows 7 can do both. And since 7 removed autorun capability on flash drives (but not on CD/DVD), 7 is not a worry either. This leaves only Vista as a problem. _____ 100% blockage in XP (Can only READ UDF) 100% blockage in 7 (Doesn't support flash drive autorun) Vista can be infected, without protective measures put in place. But at least XP & 7 are secured via this method. So, I was thinking, how can I format my drive in UDF? It doesn't show up in the right-click menu as an option. But thankfully, Windows 7 still supports formatting in UDF. You just got to use commandline to do it. Below is an example of how to format in UDF: _____ format e: /FS:UDF /Q _____ Format is the command that wipes your flash drive clean. E: is the drive letter of your flash drive. /FS:UDF tells your PC to format to File System UDF (Universal Disk Format). And lastly, /Q tells it to do a quick format (who wants to wear your flash drive out sooner, + wait longer for larger flash drives?) Now you can confidently add whatever to your flash drive with no fear of it being wiped out by autorun viruses, & no need to be buying those write protect tab style flash drives either. To run the command, open an elevated CMD box as an administrative user, then type as shown above, being careful to use ONLY the flash drive letter you want to format to UDF. Selecting another connected drive WILL destroy all data on it. Be sure you disconnect all connected drives EXCEPT your flash drive before you begin. DON'T take a chance on destroying your data! _____ Have fun making your flash drive autorun virus proof, & please comment to let me know what you think of my discovery. Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eL_PuSHeR Posted December 29, 2011 Share Posted December 29, 2011 Disable autorun. It's unsafe and annoying. That's my two cents. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Icedrake Posted December 31, 2011 Share Posted December 31, 2011 Disable autorun. It's unsafe and annoying. That's my two cents. This. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super Fast Posted December 31, 2011 Author Share Posted December 31, 2011 Disable autorun. It's unsafe and annoying. That's my two cents. Disabling the auto-runs works great, & I would have likely used that as a solution. Except, even if you disable autorun on your PC, there are tons of people who do not. And this is where you get infected... Other people. Which is why I use this instead, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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