USB Flash Drives Security Issues, And How To Secure Your PC.

I’m a large fan of USB flash drives I always have one on me with everything on it.

But recently my attention has been drawn to the security problems they face, after watching some podcasts I see that people can steal everything that is on your drive or they can use a flash drive to steal passwords etc.

I’ve tried this out on my friend’s pc for a laugh for all of his passwords from msn login passwords to the computer access password.

When looking at the other one that will steal your data on your actual flash drive, which I can see happening a lot I have not yet, tried it out I’m waiting for a new USB flash drive to try it out.

So how can you protect yourself, well for the hack that steals your data from your USB drive you will need to hold down shift when plugging in your USB drive, because it will steal your data when if auto run’s so upon holding shift it will not do this.

Another way to protect yourself from people stealing your computer passwords is disabling the auto run function which you can do by clicking start >> Run type in ‘regedit’ hit enter then go to ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\CDRom’ double click on ‘autorun’ and change the one to a zero.

Visit http://www.hak5.org for more information on USB hacks.