Back in the days of the floppy drive, disks where the most common way of spreading viruses and malware. The Internet has taken over, and floppy drives are long gone. They have been replaced by removable drives and optical discs, which are also capable of spreading malware. Autorun attacks, like that by the Stuxnet worm, [...]

Categories: Security, Software, Windows

One of the updates of yesterday’s patch day slipped through my grasps, mainly because I’m running Windows 7 and the update was not for that operating system. Ghacks reader Ilev let me know about it in the comments of my patch day overview guide Microsoft Security Bulletin Overview February 2011. Autorun has been a problematic [...]

Categories: Security, Windows

AutoRun enables devices and media to start programs automatically in the operating system. The feature should not be confused with AutoPlay which scans media and devices and suggests or launches appropriate actions automatically. Experts often recommend to disable AutoRun functionality for security reasons as the feature is exploited by malware to execute malicious code on [...]

Categories: Software, Windows

Here is a quick tip that might come in handy in certain situations. Most users have at least some software programs in their system autostart. This means that these programs are started when the Windows operating system starts. The benefit is that these programs are loaded before any user interaction which is essential for security [...]

Categories: Tutorials Basic, Windows

Panda Security has released a new security software program that increases the security of usb flash drives. The portable software program called USB Vaccine provides the means to vaccinate both the computer system and usb flash drives. Computer vaccination referring to disabling autorun completely from removable media like usb flash drives or optical drives like [...]

Categories: Security, Software, Windows

The Autorun feature is a big security risk on the Windows operating system. It is a risk even if you are the only person accessing the computer. Remember the Sony rootkit incident a while ago? Guess how Sony managed to install the rootkit on the computer system? Autorun can be disabled in Windows and this [...]

Categories: Security, Software, Windows

One common strategy to infect a computer is to use the autorun information of a removable drive, most likely an USB device, to infect the computer as soon as the user double-clicks the drive. If the computer is protected by antivirus software the attack will most likely be stopped in its tracks but the manipulated [...]

Categories: Security, Windows

Creating “session files” can help you speed up your work and also give you a tiny little bit of rest by preventing you from doing repetitive tasks every day again and again. For example, when you work on some kind of project (webdesign, audio, video, graphics), maybe you often start some sort of programs at once, together, like say |:Paintbrush – Photoshop – ColorPickerTool – ImageViewer:| or maybe |:Audacity – MusicPlayer – FrequencyAnalyzer:| and so on.

Categories: Operating Systems, Tools, Windows

Programs can be loaded at startup of your windows machine, this is called autostart. There are unfortunately numerous places in windows that allow programs to be added to the autostart. The tool Autoruns 8.4 from sysinternals.com lists all known autostart places and programs that use this location to autostart.

Categories: Tools