Protect Your PC Against Autorun Infections
By Diogo Costa for MakeTechEasier
How to protect your PC from infections that come via USB drives.–PC Pitstop.
USB flash drives are, undoubtedly, amazing tools that improve our portability and allow us to easily transfer files from one computer to another. With an ever-growing popularity, they are used by everyone and are becoming a preferred target for hackers and other cyber criminals to plant viruses and other harmful code.
But how exactly do these infections work, anyway? They take advantage of a feature implemented by Windows developers over time: Autorun. Even though this feature is somewhat handy, since it runs the media we insert in our computer automatically, these infections are placed alongside the autorun instructions so that whenever the device is autorun, those instructions will also be run, infecting the whole machine. Given that flash drives are meant to be portable and used in a lot of different computers, it is quite easy to understand how big of a problem these infections can be.
The key action: Prevention
Ok, it might seem obvious and common place, but prevention is the key here. Like you should always do online, be careful with the sites you visit and the files you download and place on your USB sticks. Also, be sure to have a protection system enabled on your computer, with an updated antivirus and, if possible, an enabled firewall.
Whenever you are in doubt if a file is safe, do scan a file with your antivirus software. In addition, you should periodically scan the entire flash drive for infections as another important safety measure.
Protecting Your Computer – Article Continued Here
This excerpt is shared with permission from maketecheasier.com.
