W32.Silly and Thumb drives

[Andrea]

I need some help on thumb drives - that teenage factor again.

My computer - NortonTM as part of AT&T Yahoo Online and my DSL subscription back in the states - I plug in a thumb drive, it doesn't automatically open it, I can right-click it and scan it first with Norton

My son's computer had Norton 360, he was not able to scan thumb drives and they would open automatically.

I gave him a "clean" thumb drive to put on pictures, and when I plugged it back in in my computer, Norton found a version of the W32.Silly worm and removed it. We went back and forth twice. Then he uninstalled Norton 360, downloaded the the NortonTM of AT&T Yahoo Online, scanned and updated several times, and it did find and remove 3 malicious worms (SecurityRisk.URLRedir, W32.Koobface.A, W32.SillyDC).

Now the problem that still exists: the thumb drive involved in the process still opens automatically when plugged in, even after having formatted it. It scans "clean" with Norton, but why does it still open automatically? How can I change that?

Andrea

[Admin]

Hi Andrea,

Ok these are a couple of steps for you to take to get rid of that virus/worm on that thumbdrive. From what you are telling me there is an autorun that is launching this virus/worm.

What I reccomend is to disable autorun on your son's computer. You can do this the easy way and the hardway which would be through registry settings.

The easy way would be to download a powertoy for XP (I am guessing this is his operating system). You can get it here

www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

Look on the right of the webpage and scroll down to TweakUI.exe click on the link to download it. After which install it and launch it from Start - Program files

Launch it and on the left window pane you will see My Computer. expand it and expand Autoplay. You can disable autoplay for every drive so when you plug in a thumbdrive or any CD/DVD it wont auto play anything which is safer as you obviously know by experience by now.

To clean the thumdrive make sure you can see hidden folders, you can do this on your machine after deleting the virus and then go to windows explorer - tools - folder options - View tab - select the Show hidden files and folders radio button and delete the auto play or any associated files that you think look fishy, if you can give me a screenshot I can tell you better what to delete and what not too delete.


Let me know if you need further help.

Cheers
Faizul