Free Tool Immunizes PC’s, USB Devices
Disable Autorun With A Click
Folks, an increasingly common method the cybercriminals are using to get their spyware and viruses onto your machines is by infecting thumb drives. In fact, if you remember Conficker…
Fortunately, the good folks at Panda have a free tool for us to help protect ourselves. The below is from their website…
Panda USB Vaccine – free antimalware to block malware spreading through USB drives.
There is an increasing amount of malware which, like the dangerous Conficker worm, spreads via removable devices and drives such as memory sticks, MP3 players, digital cameras, etc. To do this, these malicious codes modify the AutoRun file on these devices.
Panda USB Vaccine is a free solution designed to protect against this threat. It offers a double layer of preventive protection, allowing users to disable the AutoRun feature on computers as well as on USB drives and other devices:Vaccine for computers: This is a ‘vaccine’ for computers to prevent any AutoRun file from running, regardless of whether the device (memory stick, CD, etc.) is infected or not.
Vaccine for USB devices: This is a ‘vaccine’ for removable USB devices, preventing the AutoRun file from becoming a source of infection. The tool disables this file so it cannot be read, modified or replaced by malicious code.
This is a very useful tool as there is no simple way of disabling the AutoRun feature in Windows. This provides users with a simple way of disabling this feature, offering a high degree of protection against infections from removable drives and devices.
You can Download Antimalware Panda USB Vaccine free here.
* The good folks at Panda get another tip of my Geek hat for this. And my thanks also to Bryce at Technibble for mentioning this in his newsletter. I had meant to mention this, but it had slipped my mind..
Copyright 2007-2010 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved. 
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• About Tech Paul
I am a Retired computer & network technician. I used to think the machines were pretty cool. Now I don’t.
They’re anything but.
I regularly posted how-to’s and tricks & tips and general computing advice here starting in 2007. (Use the Search tool to find answers. But be aware, many are rather dated.) Sometimes I answered (your) specific questions in an article if I believed the answer was generally helpful to “everyone”. All the writing you see was my own, typos and all. There always is/was an implied “IMHO” in what you see here.
Note: You are responsible for using this blog and its content. I am in no way liable for any losses caused by user error, viruses and/or other malware, hardware or software failure, or any other conceivable reason.
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Hi Paul,
Great piece of software, I have been using it since it was avaailable. It works well most of the time. Once in awhile it will hang up at startup but not often. But it is great to keep on all of my usb drives.
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Cappydawg,
Nice to see you here again.
Yes.. it does say “beta” in the name, and I had one instance of a ‘glitch’ myself (cured by re-running it), but as you say, the ‘immunization’ is a nice thing to have!
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