Localization : Thumb drive infections at its worst.
Just recently, thumb drive viruses are getting local. This is perhaps due to the influx of cheap thumb drives in the local markets today where one can buy a 1 GB for less than 10 dollars. My friend of mine ask me how to get a virus infecting his thumb drive. Usually infections from thumb drives is caused by the autorun feature. It is somewhat very useful to delete the autorun.inf file.
I immediately look for hidden files and its extensions. To my surprise for every folder located in the thumb drive's root directory, another folder exist with the same name although with an .exe extension. Very smart, if you have disabled the hidden files and folders and hide file extensions, then you would think it is a harmless folder. The worst thing is these infected files will revive once you delete this, so we have to use the command prompt. Majority of these viruses infects to any .exe file extensions it can find, we have to remove all of them. Using the command prompt, i successfully remove all of them using this command:
where h: is your flash drive.
HOW TO AVOID
I have just learned some precautions in using flash drives because every time I get infected, reformatting the drive including the logical partitions is must once you get infected. It would mean losing your valuable data. Some of these malicious programs intend to identify whatever drives present in your system and most likely will create files on every drive it can find. Reformatting only the drive where your OS is installed is not the total solution to this. Some say, elite virus scanners can identify these viruses. However, as I said earlier they will just intend to get your money because these viruses are getting localized. As I write this post, there is no known virus scanner that will identify these localized malicious script. The best way to avoid this is to disable the autorun feature. Look for any .exe file extensions and removed them using the command prompt. Lastly, do not trust anybody.
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