If I may, I’d appreciate a small clarification and a recommendation on handling autoruns?
The first thing is, Avast said it stopped an autorun on an SD card (now cleaned of course) from running when inserted, but I’m concerned that it shouldn’t have been attempting to run because I’ve disabled all autoruns except optical drive through the registry (yep, just checked); is there something I don’t know or is Avast just boldly assuming that I haven’t disabled autoruns? (NB this is Avast 7 - sorry, still haven’t upgraded!)
Secondly, re. such infections through portable devices it occurred to me that it’s all well and good for me on my own systems to disable autoruns and have protection such as Avast but it would also help if I could secure portable devices themselves from taking on infections in the first place. It’s incredible isn’t it, some individuals and business still have no AV and minimal/no tech support which I guess is how these things propagate. I can do nothing about that but if I can offer to put protection on portable drives as I come across them I figure it will help others and also reduce the chance of them infecting me when asked to use/check their devices!
But I’ll cut to the main thing: I looked it up and found that there are a number of what you might call ‘autorun immunizer’ tools which can at least keep control of the autorun file. (By the way, I read that Win8 disables autorun by default but I and many people are of course still clinging on to XP and even Vista, just cos).
So my second question is itself really in two parts:
[ol]- Is an autorun immuniser the best option for portable device self-protection?
What, if anything, could Avast users recommend to me in that respect? General internet search threw up Bitdefender USB Immunizer and Panda USB Vaccine mainly, but I see in years past people in this forum have recommended Flash Disinfector and Autorun Eater, among others (a random example list is here https://www.techsupportalert.com/content/probably-best-free-security-list-world.htm?page=0,8 (see 9.11)).[/ol]
I’m particularly looking for something reputable that others have experience of, which will cause little space on the drive to be taken and works across all FAT, NTFS and exFAT formats (in case that may be an issue).
Hi Schmidthouse, I don’t know if you meant to post the thread link above but I checked it anyway…
You should note that MCShield and USB Vaccine are two different tools. One is a heuristic system protection (which I also use), the other (AFAIK) is an autorun immuniser (or whatever people are calling them).
Ok, I checked Dr. Bora’s entries in all 11 pages of that thread :)…(I think I also read those before I originally installed MCShield) and I’m afraid still MCShield is as I thought it was!
If I have missed something, guys, then please do give me a quote or a link to the specific entry you’re thinking of; however, unless I am very much mistaken MCShield sits on a system and intervenes at startup and/or when disks are attached to the system, such as those drive types correspond with the settings: I already have MCShield on my systems and unfortunately this does not appear to have the ability to perform the task for which I’m looking.
To re-iterate, I am seeking a USB device self-protection method to prevent (as far as possible without encumbrance) a USB device from being infected from an infected system (i.e. one which you can assume is not my own) and the only method I have yet come across is the method whereby a benign autorun entry is made and protected from interference. It is this specific problem which I am looking to solve, and am asking for suggestions toward that, which so far in my investigations seem to be limited to the autorun method; I’m hoping that some people on here will have experience of this issue.
I hope that helps clarify the difference? As I say, if you feel I have missed anything then do please let me know!
Both Panda and the fact that I have the autorun key set is stated in my OP
Naevius is scant on detail but appears to do the same job as the free tools while charging you $10 for the privilege
So thanks for trying to help but I’ve already been on search engines etc: I don’t mean to be rude to the above contributors but if we’re going to help each other on this forum it’s really only worth bothering if everyone reads the foregoing entries properly. I believe my question has been clear throughout, but in any case I have repeated and now also clarified on in case of any confusion. I’m really only interested in solutions for the specific task described, from people who have experience of using suitable tools. Thanks.
To open the program, just double click on the executable. No need to install anything. The interface is well distributed and easy to understand. Finding threats or not, BitDefender USB Immunizer always notifies the user that the immunization system was successful.
