Hi everybody!!! um,, this is my first post here so be gentle 
anyway um i was surfing the web one day and i stumbled upon an interesting topic. anyway from what i understood you could supposedly "virus proof" your usb drive by putting a read only and "undeletable?" copy of autorun.inf file in the root directory of your USB drive. the reason is so that the virus cant write its own copy of autorun.inf and start executing its files or whatever. anyway im a complete noob when it comes to computer stuff so if this post doesnt make sense the my bad 
ps. it says that your file system should be NTFS so the virus cant overwrite the .inf like in FAT32. dont know what that means. sorry
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Virus proof your USB drive???
February 15, 2008 - 12:03am
#1
Virus proof your USB drive???
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Hello and welcome! The simple answer to your question is no, there is no way to virus proof your drive.
Replacing your autorun.inf would only 'protect' any computer you plug into after your usb drive becomes infected as the autorun menu would not point to the infected executable. However this doesn't prevent anyone from browsing the flash and manually launching InfectedFoo.exe or AnnaKornikovaPics.jpg.vbs The only "virus proof" drive would be one that is incapable of being written to at all, at that point you may as well run from a CD-R
Key ID: 0xDAE3095F
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The simple answer is "you can't".
Remember, any file you can write to or delete can be operated on the same way by a virus, since the virus will probably be running as "you". On a public computer that "you" is whoever logged into the computer before you inserted your USB drive, but the same thing applies: if "you" can change or delete a file, a virus can also.
NTFS lets you set up access control on a file, but in general that only works when most of the users are not Administrators. If "you" are running as an administrator, and the virus is running as "you", it can take control of the file and change it. So one way to prevent that from happening is to make sure "you" are not running as an administrator.
The next problem is that the virus might have infected the machine so completely that it is running all the time as Administrator (or System) even if you log in as a non-administrator. If you insert your drive, even one formatted with NTFS, the virus (running as Administrator) would be able to do anything it wants to your drive, including erase it or keep you from accessing it. (Note that some viruses don't know how to do it, but you shouldn't rely on being so lucky.)
This logical chain means that if you plug your USB drive into a machine that is infected, it is not possible to completely block a virus on that machine from doing what it likes to your USB. If you plug your infected USB drive into another machine that has AutoRun/AutoPlay enabled, it will likely infect the machine within a few seconds. This is the main reason why security conscious people disable AutoRun/AutoPlay on their machines. It would be the single best way to keep an infected USB drive from passing on its infection to a new machine.
Note that nothing can completely or reliably stop an infected machine from infecting a USB drive you insert.
MC
Maybe if they make a usb version of this.
Key ID: 0xDAE3095F
Fingerprint: 5D98 65D2 1844 21A5 76C1 F0F6 4BE6 D689 DAE3 095F
I'm a newbie to usb portable apps. When I saw this thread it made me pause.
If autoplay / autorun can infect a usb drive so fast...how can one use their usb on other people's machines and then come home and plug it into your machine safely? Of course at home you would have autoplan/autorun set to off. But - can you scan the usb drive for viuruses at home after you plug it in? If so - why can't this be on the usb drive itself? Hope this isn't too bsic.
Thank you.
No such thing as a too basic question. At the least it will make us re-evaluate assumptions.
Yes, most scanners can be set up to scan a drive as soon as it is attached. And you could probably set up Clamwin portable to scan the computer when you connect your portable drive.
A full scan of a flash drive (few gig at most) will go alot faster than a full scan of a pc harddrive. waiting for a full scan to complete before you can use your flash would be tedious at best
Also an infected flash plugged into a clean protected computer, the AV software will be able to see and interceopt the launch of a malicious program.
However on an infected computer with a clean flash drive plugged in will already have the malicious software running. Hence it is less likely that the usb based scanner will catch the malicious software before it delivers it's payload.
Key ID: 0xDAE3095F
Fingerprint: 5D98 65D2 1844 21A5 76C1 F0F6 4BE6 D689 DAE3 095F
oh ok thanks. I think I get it now. I guess thats too bad. i really thought it would work