#Prodiscover basic usb format how to#
#Prodiscover basic usb format windows#

The company U3 provides a utility to give users more mobility with their applications.

#Prodiscover basic usb format how to#

Instructions are available on the Internet that show you how to create your own data and programs to be written over the existing U3 partition, making this an extremely dangerous mechanism for gaining access to systems. By default, AutoRun functionality is not enabled for removable storage devices such as thumb drives however, it is enabled by default for what the system believes to be CD-ROMs, which is what part of the U3 device appears to be, due to how itвЂ™s formatted.

#Prodiscover basic usb format windows#

This is all part of the enhanced user experience Windows offers. When a CD or DVD is placed in the drive on a Windows system, the new media is detected, and if an autorun.inf file is located in the root of the drive, it is parsed and the run= and load= lines are executed.

If someone plugs one of these into a laptop thatвЂ™s connected to a corporate local area network (LAN), whoвЂ™s to know whether the user is listening to music or downloading financial forecasts, compensation plans, contract bids, and other confidential information to the storage device?ДЄnother issue has to do with the AutoPlay functionality mentioned previously in the topic.

Right now, you can purchase an 8GB iPod Nano for around $200. In fact, weвЂ™re used to seeing them, so seeing one on a desk, plugged into a laptop, isnвЂ™t unusual at all. How about iPods and MP3 players? We see them in the gym, in the office, on the bus theyвЂ™re everywhere. Now just about everyone has these things and uses them for storing pictures, presentations, and more. It used to be that anyone who had a 64MB thumb drive was probably some kind of uber-admin. To make matters worse, these devices are ubiquitous. Want to steal a file from an organization? How about an entire database? And they call these things 'thumb' drives remove the plastic casing and strip the device down to just the circuit board, and youвЂ™ve got a 'thumbnail' drive that is quite literally the size of a thumbnail. As I write this, thumb drives with 2GB and 4GB capacity are available on the shelves of many local stores, all at reasonable prices. Since the days of the floppy disk (even back as far as when these things really were floppy!), the amount of storage capacity has increased as the size of the device (the 'form factor') has decreased. USB removable storage devices have long been known (particularly by security professionals) to pose a threat to security, especially within the corporate infrastructure.