I found a USB thumbdrive, plugged it in and now my system won't work. What happened?

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Hey Leo,

That autorun article is great. But could you make one on how to disable autorun in Windows Vista for the Vista users.

Thanks Leo and keep up the great work.

Hi Leo,

Unfortunately this question didn't come early enough to put me on guard. What you're describing happened to me couple of weeks ago and gave me a Trojan Backdoor.win32.Rbot. Later I found the autorun file on my USB/Mp3. I'll try to disable autorun as you mentioned.

But CD-ROMS and DVDs are safe, aren't they? Malware can't launch from them... or am I mistaken?

Thanks

Why would ANYBODY put a USB thumbdrive anywhere NEAR their computer if they didn't know what was on it??? The scabs that write all these viruses LIVE for people like that!

Thankfully Vista won't autorun anything without first prompting.

more info: http://www.worldstart.com/tips/tips.php/3732

To "Leo fan":

Of course malware can be launched from CDs and DVDs, if there is malware on the media.

Use your favorite search engine and look up "sony rootkit" for a rather infamous example.

what is the future of pen drive

Great article, Leo. There are some good questions and responses here. I just wanted to add my two cents worth.

It turns out that many people (about 40%) will put an unknown device into their computer, just to see what's on it. I have the evidence, which I have summarized at my site, The Honey Stick Project, at http://www.honeystickproject.com. The site was inspired by the penetration test you mentioned above, and is intended to raise awareness about the risks of using mobile devices, in general.

The technique I use in the project can be useful for measuring the level of security awareness and safe computing habits in an organization. Please drop by and give me your comments.

One other note: As indicated in one of the related article links above, it is possible for a device to be configured to trick a system into bypassing autorun, depending on your system. I have some notes about this on my site, also.

Some public libraries check out thumbdrives to their patrons. Apparently they don't always check to make sure the drive has been wiped clean by the previous user.
In my case the leftover files were benign to me, but the previous user probably wouldn't be too happy to know his resume and rehab history were left on it for anyone to see!

Moral: make sure the flash drive has been wiped clean before you use it OR return it.

Sir actually i m doing one software. It must be run the program from thumb drive .
so i dontknw the autorun file.inf

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