Travelling and using Firefox portable, my USB drive picked up a virus
from an Internet cafe.(which made installed apps unuseable I reformatted and reinstalled but it happend again.
(Now at least I know where I got it!)
I thought I would use ClamWin-AntiVirus from "portableApps" but believe this would involve me scanning the host computer which is a bit time consuming. So is there a practical, - time wise - solution to protect USB drives from infected PC's.
I downloaded "Drive Sentry" which I don't really understand and also is not free.
Thanks
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Dohouch:
You did not mention whether your USB was write protected? That is the only way you can assure that you won't get a virus. Some, not all USB keys have a switch that can protect your USB flash drive from being written to and that is what you need in a dark land.
thanks "pjamme". No my USB is not write protected, if you mean hardware switch, or do you mean something else?
If I can run a Portable app from a write protected flash-stick, can I then also run from a CD? I have tired this with the portable app "Image resizer" from SoftStone, and that worked OK from CD.
The main reason I carry my apps on a stick was to save regular bookmarks, and logins.
I haven't asked this elsewhere, (I am a bit security conscious), can a finalised CD be password protected. So should I loose it, the finder wouldn't have easy access to the data?
thanks
John has posted instructions for how to run Firefox from a CD. Some of the other apps will work from a CD, but many will not.
With an infected PC and a read-only USB drive or CDrom, your personal data can be copied and/or sent to a criminal syndicate, but it can't be messed up.
If you have encrypted data on a CD and decrypt it for use on a compromised machine, malware could copy the decrypted version.
If you want to udpate bookmarks or logins or documents, you'll need a writable medium. If you have write access to the medium, the malware on the PC will also. It could delete or mess up data files, or make encrypted files so they can't be decrypted.
Those are worst-case scenarios, but not unheard of. You can protect your data by having good recent backups, of course. The risk is higher if the files are confidential, since it is quite hard to call the data back once it has been sent on to the mother ship.
MC
Yes I was referring to a hardware swith. The main problem with that is that you cannot write to it either such as saving bookmarks.
Write protecting a USB key is more for troubleshooting or cleaning up an infected computer. Write protecting also greatly hampers running anything from the USB Key, I am sorry to say. Hopefully I'll find a way around that. I usually run Stinger RootKit Revealer etc from a write protected USB.
I am afraid I am very new to portable apps myself. I don't beileve ClamWinAV protects if it isn't started since it is just a disk and not an OS when referring to your USB. Gets complicated doesn't it.
Thanks @rab040ma for ""John has posted instructions for how to run Firefox from a CD. Some of the other apps will work from a CD, but many will not.""
Thats good information re ""download Firefox Portable.ini ""
Will give it ago, looking at getting some of those mini-Cd's, the 80mm size for travelling, they would fit in a large pocket-book/wallet.
@pjamme : well like in the above post seems they have catered for running
FF-portable from a CD.
Just wondering now, you know anything about PWD protecting a CD, not encryption just a simple 8 or 10 character PIN input in order to hide contents of CD??
thanks