Infected USB Drive Meets Windows Guest Account

ShadowOfHarbringer

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Quote from: CoinGeneral on December 25, 2013, 09:47:13 PM

Quote from: Schleicher on December 25, 2013, 05:21:30 PM

Fortunately Microsoft has disabled the Autorun feature for USB drives some time ago.
If you only want to copy the wallet file then everything should be ok, no matter what account you use.

If you need to run a program that's on the USB drive then a restricted account wouldn't help much.
Either you can't run any program there, not even malware.
Or you can run all programs on the USB drive, including malware.
Either way, you would be screwed.
With a restricted account the infection could only spread to files the account has write rights to.

Wow that's awesome.

So I can drag and drop wallet data files into and out of the USB drive and have no problems?

Also it's not possible for a virus to sneak in if I don't see the file in the USB?

Just use a Linux LiveCD to access the USB stick, and be done with it.

Next !

grue

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Quote from: CoinGeneral on December 25, 2013, 09:47:13 PM

So I can drag and drop wallet data files into and out of the USB drive and have no problems?

Also it's not possible for a virus to sneak in if I don't see the file in the USB?

That is correct. The only exception is if the virus planted an exploit in one of the files and you opened it. (extremely unlikely)

CoinGeneral

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The General

Quote from: Schleicher on December 25, 2013, 05:21:30 PM

Fortunately Microsoft has disabled the Autorun feature for USB drives some time ago.
If you only want to copy the wallet file then everything should be ok, no matter what account you use.

If you need to run a program that's on the USB drive then a restricted account wouldn't help much.
Either you can't run any program there, not even malware.
Or you can run all programs on the USB drive, including malware.
Either way, you would be screwed.
With a restricted account the infection could only spread to files the account has write rights to.

Wow that's awesome.

So I can drag and drop wallet data files into and out of the USB drive and have no problems?

Also it's not possible for a virus to sneak in if I don't see the file in the USB?

Schleicher

hero member

Activity: 675

Merit: 514

Fortunately Microsoft has disabled the Autorun feature for USB drives some time ago.
If you only want to copy the wallet file then everything should be ok, no matter what account you use.

If you need to run a program that's on the USB drive then a restricted account wouldn't help much.
Either you can't run any program there, not even malware.
Or you can run all programs on the USB drive, including malware.
Either way, you would be screwed.
With a restricted account the infection could only spread to files the account has write rights to.

CoinGeneral

full member

Activity: 182

Merit: 100

The General

Hypothetically speaking, is there any protection at all from this?

Let's say you have a USB from years back that you used to back up Bitcoin and other Alt currencies, it may or may not have a virus, let's say you think it does and you are paranoid.

You want to put it into a brand new computer so you can load up the wallet data, however you have no idea if there's a virus on the USB drive or not, and there is a lot of sensitive data on your computer you don't want stolen.

If you make a Windows Guest account with no administrative privileges or access to other user files and then plug in the USB drive while signed into Guest, will that provide any protection whatsoever?

Topic: Infected USB Drive Meets Windows Guest Account (Read 1006 times)