Monday, February 18, 2008
Digital Picture Frames, USB Hard Drives Found Already Infected with Trojans
This is a little off the wireless topic, but important for security nonetheless: A recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle mentions that many USB photo frames have been found to contain Trojan Horses. When plugged into users' computers, these Trojans can get automatically installed without the user knowing. Antivirus software may not help because they don't yet have signatures for these Trojans.
A similar problem regarding USB hard drives was discussed last year at Slashdot.org.
What's the solution?
If you run Windows, disable autorun. A few sites on how to do that are here and here. Don't trust any free software already on these devices or hard drives.
Mac and Linux users generally are safe, because autorun is unsupported or disabled by default.
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1 comments:
Macs do have an autorun feature, which does pose a security risk. To turn off autorun for CDs and DVDs:
1. Open System Preferences
2. Select CDs & DVDs
3. Using the drop-down menus for each action -- for example, WHen you insert a music CD -- select either Ignore or Ask what to do.
As Macs become more and more popular (now about 7% of the total PC market) malware writers will target Macs with the same enthusiasm that they've applied to the Windows platform. So, if you use a Mac, that doesn't mean you are invulnerable.
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