How to prevent USB flash drives from catching viruses and malwares when used in unsafe PCs?

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hardwarebr

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Jun 3, 2013
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My sister uses her USB flash drive to print stuff in her college, but their computer has so many people plugging USB drives there that it became infected and it infects pretty much any flash drive that is plugged into that. I cleaned up her notebook (it got infected by a bunch of viruses after she plugged into it, AVG did NOT catch, AVG is a POS my Kaspersky Security caught that crap immediately) but now she needs a safe way to print and use the drive in unsafe machines. Switching the device to write only mode would be an option if she had a micro SD with an SD+USB adapter but she doesn't.

So how to do this?
 
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hardwarebr

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Jun 3, 2013
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this is nice but still doesn't prevent the drive from getting infected, it might not spread in her laptop but it isn't smart to go around with an infected flash drive

 
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vancedecker

vancedecker

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May 3, 2009
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That's exactly what it does. actually different tools use different methods to both look for existing infections and "immunize" the drive against future infections.

That other guy gave you a good solution:
http://labs.bitdefender.com/projects/usb-immunizer/overview/

There are a few antivirus companies which have similar products. They are all designed around the concept of keeping Windows from automatically doing stupid things and/or protecting commonly used areas from being written to by a virus. Here is an excellent comparison:

http://www.raymond.cc/blog/stop-windows-from-executing-instructions-found-in-autoruninf/

Here is another excellent discussion:
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=333297

Also, I used one from Dr. Web a long time ago, and I don't see it mentioned, you can do a search for it.


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...below are some extra thoughts.opinions on the matter, which you can ignore. (I like to leave my personal opinions separate from the advice portion of my replies. Some people cannot seem to separate the two...):

Those solutions work well for Windows viruses, I am not convinced these are failsafe methods, but I have no evidence that it's not, just a feeling.

One reason for such a 'feeling' is that you can always use linux to look at your usb drive and find files which might be hidden from windows. Could files/virus also be hidden from linux, probably, not sure... but you have to understand, virus writers are smart, but also lazy, they create 'products' aimed at getting the most people they cam, which is windows people, so likelyhood that linux would not see and be able to disinfect is much less likely.

Personally, if I knew a usb flash drive was infected, I would throw it away, and get a new one, because I'm super paranoid that way, and usb drives are CHEAP!!! You can get a new one for $5.
 
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