Drive by downloads - from your flash drive

Filed in archive Security measures on May 15, 2007

I really can't stress enough how easy flash drives have made my everyday life. No more burning CDs (which used to cost pretty much back than), or fiddling with the rewritable ones which not every CD player would read. Nowadays most of us simply plug the little suckers in and off we go with as many data as we can fit on it.

But, did you ever consider that your flash drive could be a malware carrier? No, I'm not joking, and neither are the people who have recently had their browsers hijacked or their operating systems going bezerk, as you can read over at Mozilla forums and Cnet.

Well, all of this havoc was in fact largely due to the nifty, yet so insecure, ability of Windows autoplay and autorun. Those functions present themselves as popup windows when you insert a CD or a flash drive, asking you what to do, or just automatically starting the autorun files of inserted software CDs and other media. This functions were used by malware writers, because users rarely disable autorun and autoplay functions in their Windows OS, for the simple fact of it being somewhat useful.

If you really want to make your computer use safer, do disable autorun and autoplay. It is a bit Tricky, so follow these instructions to disable removable media autoplay and these instructions to disable the autorun. This way your flash drive will never become the source of your pain, that is, if you don't run the infected file automatically.

Are you already infected with that nasty malware? Try cleaning it up manually if your anti-virus software does not recognize it.