Which antivirus is best to scan a flash drive? How to check a flash drive for viruses? Detailed analysis. Choosing a reliable antivirus for a flash drive

Antivirus for flash drive- a necessary thing, since today almost everyone has a flash drive.

Often, important data for us is stored on flash drives: coursework, diplomas, reports, photos, etc. And getting viruses on a flash device does not bode well. Just imagine that one small virus deleted your quarterly report, which you worked on all night, or your flash drive stopped opening altogether...

Few people know that the familiar flash drive is the second largest distributor of computer viruses, after the Internet!

For example: you were visiting a friend and in between dropped off an interesting film from him. Come home, connect the flash drive to your computer, and the virus starts wandering around your system, infecting everything around you, and then you think: why is the computer slowing down or where did the important documents go?

Antivirus for a flash drive is an important attribute of your drive

The virus is not active on the USB drive itself and, as a result, is practically invisible. At

When copying an infected file (the same movie), not every antivirus will detect this “villain”, and then it will be too late...

An antivirus for a flash drive will help you avoid such a bitter lesson. One of the best programs in this segment is.

This product is installed directly on a flash drive and protects it from viruses from an infected computer.

Installation

Let's take a closer look at installing this utility.

We connect the flash device to the computer's USB port. We start the installation of trustport usb antivirus. In the first window, select a language convenient for us (1):

Click the “Install” button and the antivirus for the flash drive begins its installation:

After installation, it is worth checking the box “Launch Trustport tray” (3):

If you did everything correctly, you will see the antivirus for the flash drive minimized to tray (4):

We remove our flash device and connect it back, the flash drive icon changes to a green heart (5):

This means that our flesh drive is reliably protected from insidious viruses. If we go to it, we will see the installed files of the antivirus itself (6):

Launch

The program automatically starts when you connect your flash drive to your computer, this can be seen by the tray icon (4). If this does not happen, then go to the USB flash drive and open the program launch shortcut (7). In rare cases, a conflict between trustport usb antivirus and the computer's main antivirus may occur. If this happens, temporarily disable your main antivirus - it should help :-).

That's all, the antivirus for the flash drive is installed and your USB device is protected.

PS: If you need more serious protection, you can also install .

Hello everyone, today I want to tell you a method that protects a flash drive from viruses 100%. Well, about a hundred percent, of course I’m embellishing it, but at 99 percent, you’ll definitely protect it. Both built-in Windows methods will be described, as well as using third-party, free utilities; in short, it will be interesting, especially in light of the latest sensational encryption viruses, because no one wants to be left without their files and photos.

Flash drive without viruses

And so our task is to have a flash drive without viruses, with its frequent operation and use, on different computers and devices. Let's imagine a situation: Petya has a flash drive, or even a portable device with an SSD drive, what a waste of time. Petya has a lot of software on it, a lot of movies and music. He often goes to see his friends, since the evil Roskomnadzor blocked torrents 🙂, and everyone began to exchange information the old fashioned way, thank God that this is only an example 🙂 and all the torrents are plowing, well, Vasya had a virus on his computer, which, due to security of the flash drive, got to Petya, and he brought it home. If he has an antivirus, okay, he’ll catch it, but if not, he’ll spread it to all his friends, good Petya. But if he had a flash drive that was 100% protected from viruses, then everything would be different; we’ll look at this below.

Here are examples of errors that you may encounter if you have this virus. The first is Editing the registry is prohibited by the System Administrator

Or Task Manager has been disabled by your administrator

If you receive such errors, check with your antivirus

Methods for protecting a flash drive from a virus

Disabling the autorun inf file

And so there are viruses that spread from auto startup, due to autorun.inf file. The virus creates it on a flash drive with the necessary parameters. Knowing this information, we will create our own autorun.inf and prohibit it from being changed by blocking access to it, no access, no virus.

And so you should have a flash drive, insert it into the computer. Open the command line as administrator, I have already described 10 ways to do this, see the link on the left.

My flash drive has the letter D.

In 2011, Microsoft disabled auto-start of flash drives by default due to autorun.inf viruses. To prevent this, we will create a fake directory with the same name and give it certain attributes.

In the command prompt window that opens, enter the following lines one by one:

md d:\autorun.inf

attrib +s +h +r d:\autorun.inf

The first command creates a folder on drive D, and the second gives it the necessary attributes, for example h, making it hidden.

This is what the hidden element will look like when you enable the display of hidden files. If the display is turned off, then you won’t see the folder, but you don’t need it, you do it and forget it.

All after these simple methods, you protect the flash drive from viruses, auto launches, if you get an error that a file or folder has already been created, then you can look at them in the root of your flash drive, before that you turn on the display of hidden windows files, and then delete and recreate.

Protecting a flash drive with the Bitdefender USB Immunizer utility

And so the Bitdefender USB Immunizer utility, from one well-known manufacturer of antivirus solutions. The program is completely free and does not require installation, its operating principle is similar to the method described above, it also creates its own autorun.inf file, sets the necessary rights and monitors the recording of malicious code. You can download Bitdefender USB Immunizer (http://labs.bitdefender.com/projects/usb-immunizer/overview/), using the link.

We go to the site and click on the healthy Download button on the right.

Launch the utility and click i Accept.

The pro program scans your flash drives and displays a complete list of them; unprotected flash drives will be red.

Click on the flash drive you need and the process of protecting it will begin.

After a couple of seconds, the flash drive will turn green, which will mean it is safe.

I advise you to go to settings and set automatic protection for all USB devices.

As you can see, this is also an excellent method of protecting a flash drive from viruses.

Security with Ninja Pendisk utility

We continue further research into computer security and we have the next utility on the way, called Ninja Pendisk. The utility is also completely free and does not require installation; from its functionality it can

• scan flash drive for viruses
• auto detection of flash devices
• diagnoses flash media for protection

As soon as you run the utility, it automatically protects your flash drive from viruses. You can download Ninja Pendisk from the link www.ninjapendisk.com, go to the website and click Download.

After launching Ninja Pendisk, you will see a window prompting you to insert a USB flash drive.

As soon as you insert it, your program will automatically detect it and install the protection, it will take about 3 seconds, and the output will be a secure flash drive.

By setting the necessary rights

So if you don’t need a program to protect your flash drive, then there is another method without using it. The point is to set the necessary rights on the usb device. You must have a flash drive formatted in the NTFS file system; it has long been the default in Windows.

And so open Start > Control Panel > Folder Options

In Windows 7, you can open My Computer, press ALT, select Tools > Folder Options from the top menu

Go to the View tab and uncheck the box, if you want to use the Sharing Wizard (recommended). We save everything.

Now create a Documents folder on your flash drive, for example. Right-click on the flash drive and select properties. Go to the Security tab, delete everyone there except the group everything, then select it and click change. You will be included in the so-called access list or professional ACL. We only set the checkboxes

• Read and Execute
• List of folder contents
• Reading

remove everything else.

Click apply, a warning will pop up, click continue.

Now go to the folder properties, also via right click, security tab. We delete there, as well as everyone except the Everyone group, and check all the boxes for it.

Now, store all the files in the documents folder and not a single virus will be able to write to your root. When you try to write something down, this error window will pop up at the root of the flash drive.

The virus simply does not have rights, and in this way the flash drive is protected from auto-start viruses like autorun.inf. You can return everything back using normal formatting.

Panda USB Vaccine Utility

If you thought that was all, then you were mistaken, there is also a cool program for protecting flash drives called Panda USB Vaccine. Its principle is the same as its predecessors, but there are also advantages, such as disabling flash auto-launch in the system, although this can be done manually, let's download it, you can do this at research.pandasecurity.com. Let's launch, you will be greeted by the installation wizard.

We agree with the license

Set the checkboxes as in the picture below

All Panda USB Vaccine is installed, let's launch it. As you can see, she found the flash drive and on the right there is a Vaccinate USB button

The protection will begin. After which you will have the Vaccinated status

To be honest, in my opinion, the best option is to use the method with rights for groups, and of course you should have an anti-virus package installed on your system, from any company you like, which will still protect you, since nothing stands still, including viruses

From this article you will learn how to protect your flash drive from all kinds of viruses and malware. We will choose a reliable tool to protect your flash drive from viruses and cure the infected usb flash drive using effective antiviruses.

The first signs of virus infection. Why autostart is dangerous

On flash devices, unlike CDs and DVDs, you can perform any file operations, including formatting. So, the virus is copied to the flash drive. The first sign of this is the autorun.inf file that appears in the root of the disk.

As soon as you insert the media into the USB connector, the autorun mechanism is triggered. Double-clicking on the flash drive icon in Explorer launches the application, the path to which was specified in autorun.inf. The virus loads into RAM and copies files to the system area of ​​the disk. It is most often impossible to detect a program in task manager processes, since viruses disguise themselves as important processes: services.exe, lsass.exe, etc., without which the OS cannot operate in principle.

Infection occurs instantly and unnoticed by the user. Take, for example, the actions of the Trojan-Downloader.Win32.VB.hkq virus. It makes all folders on the flash device hidden and replaces them with executable files of the same name. If file extensions are disabled in Explorer, it is impossible to distinguish a file from a directory with the naked eye, since exe files are assigned icons depicting Windows folders.

When searching for traces of virus activity on your own, the first thing you need to do is turn on showing hidden files. To do this, go to Windows Explorer and in the Tools -> Folder Options menu, in the “View” tab, in the additional options, check the “Show hidden files and folders” checkbox.

If after this you see the autorun.inf file in the root of the disk, then this is sure evidence that your flash drive is infected. In addition, folders and files with names that were clearly not created by you are written to the disk. What files must be deleted:

• autorun.* files, where * is any file extension;
• unknown files with extensions .inf .com .sys .tmp .exe;
• folders RECYCLER or RECYCLED.

Advice: if you want to erase an infected file from a flash drive, but it won’t be deleted, use the Unlocker program. Download Unlocker

It is not a fact that this method will help you cope with the task, but you may be “very lucky” and the virus will not recover.

Be careful: you can safely delete only those files that are not of any importance to you. At the same time, we do not recommend copying data to your computer, since subfolders may contain infected data. Make sure that there are no files with an unknown extension in the folders, since the virus can replace the folders with executable files and hide them from your eyes. In Explorer, you need to set the display of file extensions: menu Tools -> Folder Options, “View” tab, in the additional parameters, uncheck the “Hide extensions for registered file types” checkbox.

There may be a problem with file attributes, namely: hidden files are not displayed, even if you enable their display. This is another trick of viruses. Open the registry reactor and in the CheckedValue key of the branch, replace the value “0” with “1”.

For reliability, the flash drive can be formatted. However, there will be no benefit from this: delete/don’t delete, and the next time you insert a flash drive, the virus, like the Phoenix, will be reborn.

There is one way to protect the media from some autorun viruses. It is quite simple and, according to user reviews on software forums, allows you to completely forget about this problem (but this is false reasoning). On the flash drive you need to create a folder (namely a folder!) autorun.inf. In this case, the operating system, theoretically, will not allow any process to create a file of the same name. But there are “cunning” viruses that bypass this type of protection by deleting the directory and overwriting the autorun file instead. Therefore, the described method, alas, is useless, because it will not completely protect against viruses from penetrating the flash drive...

As you can see, we have listed several tips, but each of them individually is unsuccessful. In general, the virus search mechanism is quite complex, and manual removal and protection is sometimes a routine and unsuccessful task. In addition, if you are not a sufficiently experienced user, you risk deleting “something wrong.” Erroneously deleting an important system file or registry key can result in disaster. But - we should make you happy! It is not at all necessary to manually remove viruses. There are programs much more effective than our activities.

Choosing a reliable antivirus for a flash drive

Avast Free

1. Avast Free - free antivirus with updated virus databases. Can scan removable devices for viruses). Virus scanning occurs automatically. As soon as the virus tries to run from the flash drive, Avast Free antivirus detects the threat and blocks it. However, before opening the USB drive, we advise you not to use autorun and check the flash drive for viruses by pointing it to an antivirus.

Dr Cureit

Free antivirus Dr Cureit is another excellent antivirus for flash drives. It is convenient for one-time scanning of removable media, hard drive, and memory areas for viruses. At each scan, it is recommended to download the latest version of Dr Cureit, as it contains the necessary anti-virus databases. That is, this is quite a good option for protecting a flash drive.

USB Disk Security - antivirus for flash drive

Developer: Zbshareware Lab.
License: shareware
Brief description: a program to protect a USB flash drive from viruses and prevent the launch of malware

Practice shows that not every antivirus - even with updated databases - is able to detect potential dangers in automatically launched applications. Now the number of infected flash key fobs has increased sharply. This proves that there is still a need for a program that will protect your computer from malware.

After installation, the program offers to disable autorun - as a potential danger to the computer. In fact, this is true: you can disguise any application or action as Autorun (even “Open in Explorer”).

USB Disk Security is a kind of antivirus for a flash drive. The protection works as follows. If a program is detected on the flash drive that is trying to run, the user will be notified about it. The information will be displayed in the appropriate section, and the attempt to launch the application will be stopped. The dangerous element can be removed immediately.

Among other things, check the “Memory protection” option. It refers to monitoring, which monitors potential pest programs located in RAM. They can also be easily unloaded. The “System” section contains the “Registry Cleanup” (restoring settings) and “Disk Cleanup” (removing temporary Internet Explorer files from the cache) tools.

Despite the fact that USB Disk Security takes up less than 4 megabytes, there is no doubt about its anti-virus effectiveness. Although it is not possible to scan a flash drive for viruses, Disk Security is a great addition to any antivirus program. If you constantly work with removable media, the application should always be in the tray.

Panda USB Vaccine

One of the auxiliary programs for protecting flash drives from viruses is Panda USB Vaccine. It is recognized as one of the most effective of its kind. The essence of the method is that the program writes “its own” autorun.inf to a flash drive, which can no longer be overwritten by viruses, no matter how hard they try to infect the media.

Panda Research USB Vaccine - a popular antivirus for USB flash drives

Let's look at the program in action. There is no need to install it, just agree to the license terms. After launch, a window appears asking you to select a device for processing. As a rule, you do not need to select anything if you are currently working with only one removable media. Just in case, after making sure that the drive letter is correct, click Vaccinate USB - and you’re done, the flash drive’s virus protection is enabled. You can forget about infection via autorun.

Panda USB Vaccine has one drawback: the program only works with devices formatted in the FAT and FAT32 file system.
Advice. You can transfer from one file system to another using the operating system as follows: Start - Run, “convert x: /FS:NTFS”, where “x” is the letter of the removable drive.

Similar functions for modifying autorun.inf are provided by programs Flash Disinfector And USB Disk Security. The first creates the AUTORUN .INF folder in the root of the disk with a file that cannot be deleted in a simple way. The second creates the autorun.inf folder with a modified path, which confuses any virus. Thus, both programs protect the flash drive from writing viruses to it.
Another useful and small anti-virus program that is worth mentioning is Autostop.

Protecting the flash drive from writing new files and viruses

This utility (script) has 3 functions:

1. Disabling autorun on your computer,
2. Protecting flash drives from autorun viruses,
3. Protection against writing new files to a flash drive.

Working with the program is incredibly simple. You run the script and see a list of functions. Then press one of three keys: 1, 2 or 3. You can press them in order to enable all options at once.

Separately, we should say about function number 3. Why protect the key fob from writing if there are commands 1 and 2? And how to work with a flash drive if its main function is essentially curtailed? Everything is explained simply. In special cases, a flash drive is used as a boot disk. If you disable autorun, then it will not be able to perform its duties. This is where function number 2 comes in handy. In this case, all the free space of the flash drive will be filled, which will prevent it from arbitrarily writing files.

Antivirus Flash Guard

Flash Guard is another antivirus designed for installation on a flash drive. The program divides computer devices into removable, non-removable, network and others. Flash Guard allows you to flexibly configure autorun. So, in the settings you can enable/disable autorun in general or configure actions when inserting media in particular:

• Removing items added by the Autorun.inf file in the disk context menu
• Informing the user about the presence of the Autorun.inf file on the disk
• Removing the Autorun.inf file
• Deleting all Autorun.* files

Flash Guard works almost unnoticeably, minimizing itself into the Windows notification area.

USB program

Let's mention the “smallest” - the USB program (http://sputnik70.narod.ru/usb.html). Even a modest 10 KB of code, as it turns out, can contain the essentials for fighting viruses. Again, the program is designed to monitor autorun.inf files. USB is located in RAM and when new drives are connected, it automatically renames the autorun.inf files on the flash drive to autorun.inf_renamed. As a result, “the likelihood of infecting your computer with viruses spreading through flash drives is significantly reduced,” as the manual states.

How to check a flash drive for viruses online

By the way, the above-mentioned anti-virus systems (Kaspersky and Doctor Web), through the official website, also offer to check the flash drive for viruses online. The convenience of online scanning is that you do not need to install resource-intensive antivirus software on your computer. In addition, this service is free.

As practice has shown, updating your antivirus won't hurt. The developers are not asleep, and the most common autorun flash drive pests are already in the database. With a high degree of probability, they can even be found and eliminated. However, an antivirus is not a panacea for all ills.

In essence, autorun viruses can be practically harmless (except for the effect on the nervous system of users) and not be recognized by antivirus programs. In this case, you can and should use programs that process the USB drive in such a way that autorun information cannot be copied onto it. These are not exactly virus removal programs (see list above), but are nevertheless an excellent security alternative for your flash drive.

What this and the previous programs have in common is that they protect not a flash drive, but a separate computer. In general, we strongly recommend combining methods of protection against autorun viruses: firstly, vaccinate the flash drive, secondly, install an antivirus on your computer and, without fail, one of the above-mentioned programs.

Finally, a few tips on the topic. By following them, you will certainly protect your computer from autorun viruses.

1. If possible, do not give your flash keychain to anyone for personal use. This way you will protect yourself from autorun viruses. And if you really want to share, don’t forget to copy all the important data from the flash drive to your computer.
2. If viruses have blocked access to files or writing to a flash drive has become impossible, see the guide on how to remove protection from a flash drive
3. Check the drive for viruses immediately after inserting it into the USB socket by selecting the scan command from the context menu.
4. If possible, do not open removable media by double-clicking or through the “Open...” window. Use the Total Commander file manager or other file managers when working.
5. Nowadays this is rare, but on some flash devices manufacturers include a file write protection button. If you copy information from a flash drive to a computer (and not vice versa), it would be a good idea to switch to this mode.
6. If you hold down Shift for 10 seconds when connecting a removable drive, autorun will not work, even if this function is activated on the computer.

Always a hot topic - viruses on a USB flash drive. How to deal with this and how to protect yourself?
Viruses that infect flash drives often turn out to be "autorans" that infect the computer immediately after opening an infected flash drive (auto - automatically, run - "start"). You can read the article in more detail; by the way, it also describes a lot about how to remove a virus and protect a flash drive.
In this article I want to take a slightly different path, mainly through the program.

There is a free Russified program called USB Disk Security


Its main task is to scan a flash drive for viruses and notify you about the results.
If the flash drive is clean, the following window will appear in the lower right corner

You can restore the system if, after treating or removing viruses, they damaged it and Windows began to work or boot incorrectly:

You can put a password on the flash drive or protect it from writing on another computer. This is also a kind of protection if you give a flash drive so that they copy something from it, but do not write it down.
Or you can view startup programs to remove them from there. Also an additional perk.

In general, a good and necessary program that lives up to its purpose.

I've been using it for about six months now. I started it after a similar utility from Kaspersky (in one of the articles I already wrote about this company) began to bother me because it stupidly hangs in the system and only shows what it finds, but does not delete. This program suits me very much.
The only drawback is that sometimes when connecting a USB drive it does not show the scan result. More precisely, it shows, but not on top of all windows. Therefore, sometimes you have to minimize everything in search of a window.

And finally, a little trick.
I strongly do not recommend opening flash drives (especially if you think there is a virus) through My computer or using the window that appears

If you don’t have a file manager, then you definitely have one (Win RAR works well), which can also open flash drives quite well, and will absolutely never launch viruses, and you can see all the hidden files and folders that you don’t need and delete them .

Based on the above, some may have a reasonable question: How to detect a virus on a flash drive?

Let's assume you opened a flash drive using an archiver or file manager and saw the contents.
If this is your flash drive, then it’s a little easier, but even if it’s someone else’s, it’s also quite simple.

In general, if there is a virus on a flash drive, then you need to pay attention in this order (personally, I do this, you can do it differently):
1) to all files and folders with an “abnormal” name/name. It could even be gjsd.kjd or hngsdh.exe or some other nonsense. And Autoran also belongs to this group.
2) to all protected and hidden files and folders. Usually no one hides folders and files on a flash drive like that. It’s convenient to see this in Total Commander Podarock Edition - there they are indicated in different colors.
3) to all other third-party folders and files that seem suspicious to you. But this is for those who understand what they are doing, or if this is your flash drive and you know every folder and file by sight.

And finally, never try to open an unfamiliar file on a flash drive, even out of curiosity!

p.s. A virus on a flash drive is not such a big problem and it can be easily removed, seen and neutralized even without the help of programs. Don't forget about the article I mentioned above.

USB Disk Security is a free application that provides complete protection against all kinds of malware distributed via removable USB drives. The application works with external hard drives, memory cards, digital cameras, flash drives, as well as other devices that can be connected via a USB connector. Disk Security is based on special threat detection technology; Like an antivirus program, the utility is able to work in hidden mode, only making its existence known only if malware is detected.

Basically, a personal computer is infected with viruses while using the global Internet; a little less often this happens during the installation of a dubious or unverified program. An infected file can also enter a PC through the most ordinary flash drive.

When an infected flash drive is connected to a personal computer, malicious software penetrates the hard drive, and most importantly, this happens so quickly that installed anti-virus programs do not always have time to react in time. Especially for such cases, it is necessary to use programs that can easily cope with this type of threat. Today, Disk Security is one of the best programs for protecting against infected files distributed via USB drives.

When viruses are detected, the application, depending on the settings, will delete or block them, thereby preventing them from launching automatically. In addition, the utility is able to restore the system after it has been infected with malware, clear the hard drive of temporary files, prohibit copying files from the computer’s hard drive, check URLs, completely block USB ports, manage startup, force scan hard drives.

The program is equipped with a convenient and simple user interface in Russian. The control panel is located on the left side of the working window, consisting of seven main points. The following sections deserve special attention: data protection, scanning and USB shield.

The last section is responsible for displaying a full report on all detected threats. You also need to take into account that by default the utility automatically removes any malicious application. So, in order to avoid deleting important documents, it is better to disable this option, for example, after deleting the boot file, your USB drive will not be able to start. After disabling, Disk Security will act as follows - it will automatically move the infected file to quarantine or simply mark it.

In addition to tools for automatically checking flash media, the “Scanning” section is equipped with a vaccination function. Vaccination can be carried out both on removable media and on the personal computer itself. In this case, a special file is created on a flash drive or hard drive that prevents some malicious applications from launching. If desired, vaccination can be turned off.

The “Data Protection” section is able to provide devices with higher protection; for example, you can set a ban on moving data from the computer to a memory card or even block access to the PC via the USB port. To close access, you will need to restart the computer, only after this the settings will take effect.

Key features of USB Disk Security:

• Perform a more thorough scan of external drives. If malware is detected, it is either deleted or quarantined.
• The presence of a resident anti-virus scanner that is triggered when a new USB drive is connected. Without making changes to the settings, infected files will be automatically deleted.
• If necessary, you can completely disable automatic startup on your PC.
• When using the utility, you can view the content without the risk of infecting your personal computer.
• Sites are scanned for infected applications. The following services are used during the scan: Trend Micro, McAfee, VirusTotal, Symantec and Google.
• The search service linkzb.com provides the opportunity to safely use the Internet.
• The application is able to prevent unauthorized connection of a USB storage device to the PC.
• Blocking the copying of unauthorized data to USB is done by using the Access Control tool.
• Using a system for cleaning temporary files, if the virus is located in temporary directories, it will be deleted immediately.
• You can set a password in the program settings.
• Full control over applications included in startup.
• Availability of a built-in system for restoring important directories in the registry that were affected by malware.
• You can download Disk Security completely free of charge.
• Works on Windows XP, 7 and 8.
• Automatically checks for updates.
• The application does not need to update the virus database, since it does not work like a standard anti-virus program.
• Due to its small size, the utility can be installed even on a weak personal computer.
• Seems to be fully compatible with many modern antivirus programs.
• Using a multilingual interface, a total of 12 languages ​​are available.

USB Disk Security is a simple and effective program to use to provide complete protection against malware distributed through removable media.