How to protect from viruses that spread through USB drives

As USB drives become cheaper day by day, their usage is growing. Most of the virus today spread through USB drives. This post is concentrates on how prevent viruses that spread in this way.

As I told previously, My posts concentrate only on windows security. In all versions of windows, when ever a removable device is plugged in you might seen an AUTOPLAY dialog popping up. This shows tasks that can e performed on that removable device. Whether you utilize this feature or not, this is mostly utilized by viruses to run automatically in your system.

Most common viruses have a configuration file by name autorun.inf which contains information what to do when you plug in a removable device. This is exploited by viruses which create/modify autorun.inf to that will make themselves to automatically run when an infected removable device is plugged in.

So first to prevent viruses running automatically remove this feature by disabling autorun.This can be removed manually by registry editing or else by using software. Secondly you should not double click drive icon in My computer, instead you should right click it and click on explore.

All viruses are usually hidden, because they make them selves as system files. Manually one can remove virus files by removing all hidden files in the removable disk which one did not copy into it.Hidden files can be shown by enabling “show hidden files and folders” and disabling “Hide protected operating system files” under view tab of FOLDER OPTIONS present in TOOLS menu of any explorer window.

  Also there are antivirus softwares that are specialized to remove viruses that spread thru USB removable devices.One of them is USB DISK SECURITY. This is not a freeware. But you can find licenses by googling.

  I can give you a Download link to trial of this software which has functional limitations.The snapshot of this software is given here.

Technorati Tags: USB Disk Security,Antivirus