Can I be infected through a pendrive

[88crawler88]

Hello , I'm repairing a pc with XP home ed. on and a problem with the zlob trojan, looking around for the net I read it is related to site with adult material that can induce user to download a fake activeX component. Now I'd like to find the infected files and delete them , but I don' t want to infect my computer. So the question is : if I use a USB drive for files exchanging between my computer and the infected one, do I run the risk of being infected me too? I need doing this because I want to load on the bad computer programs like HiJack and then analyse the logs from my pc . As antivir I use AntiVir and alway update it.

[f22]

If you are using a U3 drive, it is possible for it to autorun just by plugging it in. Otherwise, you will have to actually tell it to autorun yourself. Either way, it is a good idea to have autorun disabled on all your machines to avoid anything that could be on a CD or U3 drive.

Here are instructions for how to disable:
http://antivirus.about.com/od/securityt ... utorun.htm

After you do that, you should be safe.
Even after you do that make sure you right click and press explore for any type of media you suspect of containing malware, don't just double click!

[88crawler88]

it's not U3 pendrive, I 've disabled the autorun option. If I transfer executable files from my pc to the infected one, and then I format the pendrive alway from the infected pc , the USB will be cleared , am I right? After this I can plug it in my pc without any risk?

[f22]

I wouldn't depend on formatting it to keep it clean, since the virus could, I suppose, continuously try to infect drives, and thus re-infect it as soon as you format it. Since you have autorun disabled, though, it can't automatically run even if it is infected, so you should be safe. Just don't double click the drive icon, because I'm pretty sure that doing so will execute the autorun file even if you have autorun disabled.

[88crawler88]

ok, thanks for the help, bye

[sablefoxx]

Yes, you defiantly can, in fact USB drives are a very effective attack vector, http://hak5.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=2361

Turning off autorun helps, but you should still be careful of what you stick in your computer