The Ultimate Guide to Protection from USB Viruses
As a follow up to my previous article on how to protect your PC from viruses & spyware, I’m gonna show you how to protect yourself from even the latest, meanest & baddest viruses that spread through USB thumb drives. USB drives have become an easy and also the most popular data transfer medium these days, found with everyone’s friends, girlfriends, professors and even dads and moms. However, they’re also the most potent carriers for viruses as people go happily clicking everything inside! Let’s take a look at how these viruses spread and how we can stop them.
The best method to stop many viruses is to do a scan every time you use a thumb drive. However, I’ve personally seen some viruses slip through even NOD32 and Kaspersky scans. In my opinion, they’re too new (thousands crop up every week) and the guys over at the virus definitions haven’t found them yet. Due to this, I’ve seen frustrated network admins disabling USB ports and some even sealing the ports off with glue 
. My method uses only a small but an amazing tool called FreeCommander (free download link at the bottom of this article). Before we get to the screenshot guide, let’s get an idea of how to identify viruses on thumb drives.
Some virus inflictions are pretty easy to figure out- they add weird named files (mostly executable EXE files). One of the most common thumb drive viruses that is found in almost all of the computers in my college (and many others too!) is the New Folder virus (Its named Sohanad). It simply creates an executable with the name ‘New Folder’ and an icon that looks exactly like a folder. Click on it and it jumps to your computer and waits for you to insert another USB drive into yours- when you do, it jumps onto that and it spreads on and on! Clever huh? Another variant of Sohanad is a bit more ‘clever‘. It hides (sets hidden and system attributes) any folder in your USB drive and then creates an executable with the same name as the hidden folder. And another (woah!) simple method to spread viruses even before you could open your drive is through the Autoplay feature. I strongly recommend everyone to turn off Autoplay for all drives. The Autoplay feature essentially looks at the ‘autorun.inf’ file inside your thumb drive, which contains directives to launch some executable or script that could seriously annoy you.
So now you must have a pretty good idea of what to look for, as we’re gonna kick some serious virus butt 
Download FreeCommander and install it. Launch it and enter the Extras>Settings menu and to open the Settings dialog. Now click on the ‘Shell menu’ item on the tree at the left and add FreeCommander to the ‘Drives’ context menu. Click on OK to save the settings. You can also close FreeCommander now. I repeat, this method is 100% effective only if you disable Autoplay. Now once you insert you thumb drive, open your Computer and right-click on the drive icon and select FreeCommander. Now FreeCommander should launch with the contents of the drive on the right pane. Look for autorun.inf, .bat files (DOS scripts), .vbe & ,vbs files (VB scripts). All these are potentially viruses (more so when they’re grayed out, meaning they’re hidden). Now select and delete them. Congratulations, you just saved your ass 
Also, like I mentioned before, the virus could also hide your folders which won’t become visible even after you’ve set ‘Show hidden files & folders’ under the Folder Options. FreeCommander to the rescue again! The hidden files are shown inside FreeCommander and you can change their attributes back to normal by selecting the hidden items and clicking on the File>Attributes/Timestamps menu or by using the keyboard shortcut Shift+Enter. It opens another dialog that lets you modify attributes the way you like them. Click on ‘Set Attributes’ to enable all the checkboxes below. Then tick or untick any box to set the desired attribute and click on OK when you’re finished. And there you have it, the knowledge AND the tool to protect your PC and your USB drive.
Note that this has to be practised and used every time for maximum protection. This is because though you may clean your drive, you’re anyway gonna use it on some other computer and chances are, that computer has some kinda USB virus. Cruel, isn’t it?
Check out the screenshots of the step-by-step process explained above. A note to readers- don’t be intimidated by all these steps. They’re all very simple and almost like your normal Windows Explorer experience, albeit a better one 
FreeCommander | FreeCommander Portable Edition
Download the latest version of FreeCommander (Freeware)
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Tagged as freecommander, virus + Categorized under Technology, How To | »
This is a very good method. But an even hassle free method to remove new folder virusses adn most new virus is to use Avast antivirus(with auto update feature on). I’ve been using this software for more than a year and have to give it a pat on the back. It does a great job really. Combine it with comodo firewall adn the results are awesome. I’ve had no viruses in my sys for a long time now thanks to these two
@Parikshith: I’ve been hearing a lot of good things about Avast, but personally, I just hate the interface. Also, tech reviews show NOD32 is stronger than Avast in heuristics. Also, if you use NOD32 Smart Security, you wouldn’t need a firewall running separately. Having used only 256MB of RAM for years before, I treasure memory usage a lot and have been noting memory usage of almost everything on my computer. ESET has got an amazingly small memory footprint, which I like the most. Do keep in touch and let me know how good Avast is
Very very Informative and Important too.
Huh! I’ve been using NOD32 for the Past 1 year.Its not free,most of the cracks for it don’t work, It wouldn’t update its Virus database regularly,most of the time the update process ends up in ERROR and above all It hasn’t detected a single Virus or Malware or whatever it is ever since i installed it. I know very well that my system is infected and it wouldn’t even detect it. Ok so it doesn’t drain System resources,Good. But whats the point in having it if it cant detect anythin??????
NOD32 is a piece of CRAP.
I switched to Avira,most ppl wouldn’t have even heard about it. Its free and detected malwares as soon as i plugged in my Pendrive. i don think it would be better than Free commander or Ikill, but it certainly is way Better than Nod32 in perfomance and uses minimum system resources.
@Anand:
I’m dumbstruck
. You’re the only person who’s had such a bad experience with NOD32. You very well know it works well & updates regularly on my computer 
Its as Anand said… even i tried NOD before Avast and had lotsa problems. the cracks didnt work and the software used to hang if scanned sandisk memory cards.!! annoying and i seriously dont bother if my antivirus takes in much memory as its for the good of my system… (that saying i used to have 1.5 GB RAM in my prev rig…. new rig having 4GB of which i cant use 1GB just coz i dont have a 64bit OS
!! haiyo!
And having a standalone firewall is always better than something thats integrated with an antivirus pack. Comodo not only does the firewall thing but its defense+ option also allows me to block programs form running (bit like UAC in vista…
Also the virus definitions of avast are in small packs and not as a huge bundle. so its good. keeps the system healthy and running. I even installed avast in my college rigs to get rid of some real nasty viruses and it did the job real neat. And avira is something thats catching up, not used it yet but ppl say its good. And have a look at the following link
http://download.chip.asia/in/Top-10-Power-User-Tools_4170981.html?tab=5&show=0
Thats a page from CHIP site giving top ten power tools to be installed in a new rig….. and avast is no:1 in the list
I’m with Parikshith. Down with NOD32.
@Parikshith: Well I’m surprised that Avast and Avira are gaining ground. I was only voicing a very personal opinion and will stick to NOD32 until I face problems like in your case
Lol ! just like me
i wont change avast no matter what anyone says!! 
I have also seen some weakness on Nod32 smart security
@M.M.Kashani: Can you be more specific? What kinda weakness have you seen?