Virus prevention

[joey00]

I am becoming concerned. It seems that memory sticks (flash drives) are increasingly becoming the vehicle for the spread of virusses.

I am increasingly using memory sticks. So I feel I should start to take preventative measures.

The main vulnerability seems to lie in the auto-run on a newly inserted medium. (Reminds me of the directory read on the old floppys). Or am I the only one that remembers that?

I am looking for any information /suggestions /advice in this direction.

Anybody?

[Dangertux]

I am becoming concerned. It seems that memory sticks (flash drives) are increasingly becoming the vehicle for the spread of virusses.

I am increasingly using memory sticks. So I feel I should start to take preventative measures.

The main vulnerability seems to lie in the auto-run on a newly inserted medium. (Reminds me of the directory read on the old floppys). Or am I the only one that remembers that?

I am looking for any information /suggestions /advice in this direction.

Anybody?

Well hopefully I can provide an answer that is less vague than the question.

Basically in terms of Ubuntu (this is an Ubuntu support forum, if you're asking for another OS then...yeah.) However, auto-run is pretty tightly controlled under Ubuntu. It's going to ask you at least twice before auto-running anything.

If you need Anti-virus/malware solutions unfortunately there aren't many good alternatives available under Linux (at least not for free). You can try ClamAV, or Avast, AVG also has an alternative for CLI scanning.

Hope this is helpful.

[CharlesA]

I use BitDefender for scanner Samba shares, it has had a few false positives but nothing major.

I think DT covered pretty much everything else.

[c.cobb]

This is a concern of mine also. I boot Ubuntu off a Live USB, but keep some Windows tools on the memory sticks as well. On a Windows PC that you don't control, I don't think there is a way to temporarily disable the AutoPlay feature -- for a while you could hold down the [shift] key when inserting a USB stick, but I read that *enables* AutoPlay on other Windows versions. If true, that's pretty lame.

What I do is to place a very basic autorun.inf file in the root dir of my USB sticks so I can at least know if/when another PC has messed with it. Since I also like to give various drives unique icons, I made this page which allows a quick drag'n'drop setup. The icons are then used on Linux, Windows, and OS X systems, and this also work nicely with TrueCrypt data volumes.

[needhelppeeps]

I use an sdcard, they can hold quiteabit ofstorage and can be set to readonly. To me an external media which cannotbe hardwarewrite protected is not something I'd want to use between systems.

[joey00]

Well hopefully I can provide an answer that is less vague than the question.

Basically in terms of Ubuntu (this is an Ubuntu support forum, if you're asking for another OS then...yeah.) However, auto-run is pretty tightly controlled under Ubuntu. It's going to ask you at least twice before auto-running anything.

If you need Anti-virus/malware solutions unfortunately there aren't many good alternatives available under Linux (at least not for free). You can try ClamAV, or Avast, AVG also has an alternative for CLI scanning.

Hope this is helpful.

The last part of your message is indeed helpful.

Since this thread is marked [ubuntu] Virus prevention
I did not think it necessary to repeat the Ubuntu designation.

As far as the auto-run, that is a problem. I need to be able to boot from some USB sticks. And I need to be able to just access the contents of others. The prospect of a boot sector virus being transmitted doesn't make me happy.

Is there, perhaps, any way of adding any warning to the use of a stick either for read or write? Say a prompt along the lines of: Do you want to write to the device? y/n

I do not see where the question is vague. I use several different flavours of Ubuntu, and expect to encounter several different virusses, so it is correct not to specify. Perhaps you can point out my mistake, so I may avoid it in future?

[CharlesA]

There are no virii in the wild for Linux. You'd be scanning for Windows viruses if you installed one of those. Is that what you want?

[OpSecShellshock]

Are you primarily concerned about the USB drive writing to the computer's disk or about the computer writing to the USB drive?

Do you own all of the systems that the USB drives will be plugged into? Do you own all of the USB drives that will be plugged into the computers? Will compatibility with other operating systems be necessary, or are you only using Ubuntu?

[joey00]

There are no virii in the wild for Linux. You'd be scanning for Windows viruses if you installed one of those. Is that what you want?

I thought there were few not no linux virusses around. Are you sure there are none?

And yes, I am concerned about Doze virusses too - many machines have dual boot.

[joey00]

Are you primarily concerned about the USB drive writing to the computer's disk or about the computer writing to the USB drive?

Do you own all of the systems that the USB drives will be plugged into? Do you own all of the USB drives that will be plugged into the computers? Will compatibility with other operating systems be necessary, or are you only using Ubuntu?

As long as the USB drive is clean, I am concerned to keep it so. But, should it become infected, I do not want to complicate life by spreading the infection to other hardware. It just makes the search and destroy task messy!

I do not own (most of) the systems that the drives will be plugged into. I do own (most of) the USB drives.

There is often a windows something sitting as a dual boot. I would need to be able to manipulate (copy, move, delete, view) files on that format too. Other than that I do not need to access files via, say, windows.

I use (usually) branches of the debian family when using Linux.