Monday, September 17, 2012

Bitdefender USB Immunizer


Bitdefender USB Immunizer is a simple tool that can reduce that chance of your USB flash drive becoming infected by autorun-based malware.
Under normal circumstances this can happen very easily. All you need to do is plug your drive into an infected PC, and the malware will copy itself to the device, adding a custom autorun.inf file. When you next connect the drive to a system where autorun is enabled, the malware will be launched, and that PC will become infected, too.
Use Bitdefender USB Immunizer, though, and the program will create an Autorun.inf folder on your PC, which in turn contains a number of other files. 
If malware tries to create an Autorun.inf file on the drive, 
then the operation will fail (you can't have an \Autorun.inf file if there's already a folder there with the same name). 

This doesn't offer a complete guarantee of safety, as the malware could delete the folder, 
but most won't even attempt to do this and so the Immunizer does offer useful protection.
As a bonus, the tool also offers a way to turn Autorun off for removable media (though not CD/ DVD drives), 
which will prevent USB-based malware from executing automatically, even if Immunizer fails. 
There's no complexity to it, no drives to select, just click the "Off" button and your system will be just a little safer.
Note that Bitdefender USB Immunizer is now "release 3", the third update to the tool.

The latest "release 3" brings these changes:

- Auto-updater. No more firing up your browser just for an update.
- Interface overhauled
- Added a way to immunize several USB media at once.



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