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Usually just printing. I find the viruses on my USB drive after printing from it on other people's computers. I keep that drive for one-way use and never get fi
by averagewall 9y ago
Usually just printing. I find the viruses on my USB drive after printing from it on other people's computers. I keep that drive for one-way use and never get files back off it because they're all potentially infected.
- qb45 9y agoNote that that the pendrive itself is potentially "infected" too, sometimes there are OS and file manager bugs resulting in code execution without the user clicking anything.
- averagewall 9y agoThose bugs would be zero-days and patched before viruses using them are widespread.
- DanBC 9y agoYou put files onto the stick. You put the stick in someone else's machine and print the files. The stick might be infected after this use. You don't put the stick back in your machine, because it might be infected. Do you continue to put it in other people's machines to keep printing?
- snaily 9y agoUnlike biological contagions, digital ones typically aren't transferred just by physical touch. Don't run or open anything off the stick on your machine and you'll be fine.
- DanBC 9y agoWindows has had exploits where preview features (eg Explorer thumbnails) were running malicious code.
- averagewall 9y agoOf course. Windows has also had RCE vulnerabilities just by being connected to the internet. Hence the need to keep it updated.
- dogma1138 9y agoThe stick itself is the virus aka Bad USB or any other similar vector.
- averagewall 9y agoI don't do step 3. Viruses hardly ever work that way. An infected computer can infect a USB drive, but not the other way around for an up-to-date OS and if you're careful not to run mystery programs you find on it.
- bostand 9y agoNot true...
- averagewall 9y agoCan you cite any examples or describe the mechanism it would do that?
- paulmd 9y agoUSB sticks that can use firmware-level filesystem tables and/or multiple host-visible partitions, pretend to be a hub that is hosting multiple devices (HID mouse+keyboard, etc) in addition to an autorun, etc. Not only can you trivially make such a thing with an arduino but there are also some commercial USB sticks which have a persistent "background" filesystem that cannot be formatted away. Anything that is run automatically in the background, like the thumbnail services.
- averagewall 9y agoFor a fake HID device, you'd see cmd windows or whatever else it uses popping up. Other data hidden on it isn't a problem by itself. It can only passively sit there without some other attack vector.
- tokenizerrr 9y agoRight, but the GP described an USB stick that they own. If you know that it's just an USB stick none of that applies. Autorun hasn't been a thing in ages.
- 9y ago