Thread: Can USB sticks catch viruses?
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Old 30-03-2011, 23:58   #6
Stuart
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Re: Can USB sticks catch viruses?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Web-Junkie View Post
USB sticks are susceptible to boot viruses as well as file infections just like normal drives.

I create a folder called autorun.inf on all my USB sticks and make them hidden so anything that tried to modify/create the normal autorun.inf file won't be able to use that to launch an autorun virus!
I just disable autorun. That way it doesn't matter if anything creates and autorun file.

Windows 7 now only autoruns optical media (CDs, DVDs, Blu rays etc), but in my opinion, even that is too much. They should just disable it totally, and do what the Mac does.

Basically, OSX start the appropriate player software if your disk is a CD or DVD (not sure what it does with a Blu ray as I don't have access to any Macs with Blu Ray software), it starts the appropriate player. Beyond that, it does not do any form of Autorun, purely because of the threat of viruses.
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