Protect your PEN/USB Drive from Virus

1:45 AM Abdulla Nabeel 0 Comments

World is shrinking, and so are the data storage devices. One common device which every one use is USB devices like thumb drive, PEN drive, USB Hard disks etc...

After floppy disks which were earlier prone to many viruses, now it is time for USB Devices. Below are some safety precautions that you may perform before transferring data from USB devices.

1) When you plug in the USB device in your system (Desktop / Laptop), you will most likely be prompted by a popup window as shown below.

2) Dont select any of them, simply click cancel.

3) Goto Start -> Run and type cmd to open the Comman Prompt window

4) Now double click My Computer Icon (which is usually present in the desktop). It should show the list of drives available in this machine. Check the drive letter of the inserted USB Device. (As in above case it is (I:))

5) Go back to the command prompt and type the drive letter and hit Enter.

6) Now type the below command and hit Enter. This command displays all the hidden files and folders in the current working drive (I: Drive in our case)

    I:\> dir/w/o/a/p

7) You will be able to see a list of files, after you run the above command. In the list, check if you see any one of the files mentioned below,

    - Autorun.inf

    - New Folder.exe

    - Bha.vbs

    - Iexplore.vbs

    - Info.exe

    - New_Folder.exe

    - Ravmon.exe

    - RVHost.exe

or any other unknown .exe files that you are unaware of and you have not copied to the device earlier.

8) If you find any one of the files listed above, you are right!!! you have got a virus in your USB device. Don't panic, it will be transferred to your system and start its duties only when you start copying the files to your computer's hard drive.

9) Now that you have confirmed that you have virus in your USB device, now type the following command and hit enter

    I:\> attrib -h-r-s-a *.*

    attrib command is for displaying and changing the attributes of the files.

10) Now Delete each of the files that you were not aware of and found to be on the above list by using the below command and hit enter

    I:\> del <filename>

    For eg. I:\> del Autorun.inf

11) That's it, you did it!!!!!!!! now your USB Device is free of virus.

Note: Some viruses are vulnerable to antivirus softwares. When unnoticed these viruses sits in system registry and doesnot allow the antivirus software to locate the source file. But it generates a virus child file in all the folders of the system. Antivirus software may detect the child file and delete it, but it keeps on generating. It cannot be stopped until source virus file is removed.