How to
protect your flash drive from Worms in windows XP
Most of
the time we plug our Flash drive in someone’s computer and some creepy crawlies
get on it! When we bring it home we get infected with the virus. Many a times
our antivirus software also does not catch these bad guys…
Most of the worms take advantage of
the autorun feature in windows XP, which automatically runs the virus when you
double click on your flash drive.
Well here’s a way to prevent this.
1)
First go to notepad and save a blank file with name "autorun.inf" (including quotes)
somewhere on your computer. We need this file as a dummy autorun file on your
flash drive.
2)
Next you will need to convert it to NTFS. Ntfs file system
allows you to set custom permissions on various files. That’s the feature we
are going to exploit!
Note that NTFS file system might not work on older OS's but it provides
security options which we want
3)
We need to format your drive as NTFS
You can directly format the drive to NTFS or can
convert it to NTFS including your data
to do this go to Windowsàrun type cmd in the box. A
command prompt window will appear
4)
In the prompt type convert x: /FS:NTFS (where X is your drive
letter)
5)
After that has been completed, paste the autorun file in Your Flash
drive (replacing any existing one)
6)
Now go to command prompt again and type attrib X:\autorun.inf +s +h
7)
To make the file inaccessible to any viruses, we will deny write
permission to the file to every user.to do this, cacls X:\autorun.inf /D
Everyone
8)
That’s it. You’re done! Now no virus will automatically run when
you double click your flash drive.
