Protect Yourself from USB Thumb Drive Attacks In Windows 7 [How To]

By Angel Luis on August 7, 2010 (4 Comments)

Use of USB devices is sometimes the easiest way to get infected by a virus.

Perhaps you want to control the usage so that another user cannot copy something to an external device.

Learn, in this guide, how to protect yourself from attacks via a USB drive.

Please note: This guide involves use of the Group Policy Editor, which is not available on Home versions of Windows. Click to find out more about the Group Policy Editor.

Protect Yourself from USB Thumb Drive Attacks

Okay this is a solution for your problems:

Press WinKey + R, type gpedit.msc and press Enter.

Windows will then load the Local Group Policy Editor:

Go to Local Computer Policy, Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, System, Device Installation and Device Installation Restriction.

Select Prevent installation of removable devices on the right pane:

Enable so no one can install an USB or other removable device and press Ok.

Now you are less vulnerable to USB thumb drive attacks.

About Angel Luis

I am an Engineer of Telecommunications that love computers. My first computer was a Commodore 16kb, about 25 years ago and since then I am always fighting computers problems. Please visit my entries and ask me about whatever problem you have, I will be pleased to help you. My email is discoveryourpc [at] gmail [dot] com. You can follow me on twitter @agenlu or read my blog www.discoveryourpc.net

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Comments

http://twitter.com/tbone87 Trevor Mitchell

Why disable all usb or removable devices? Just shut off autorun so that you can still use your usb ports. Autorun is what allows the virus to spread.
http://richr.org/ Rich

Disabling Autorun doesn't stop someone running a script and stealing data/writing data.
http://discoveryourpc.net Angel

First, thanks for reading the post and writing a comment.

I think that Rich and I in the post are not talking just about virus.

I have for example a Pen drive with 8 GB of capacity. Imaging how easily is for me to steal data from a computer.

Okay this is not the ultimate security protection but make stealing data a bit more complicated.
http://discoveryourpc.net Angel

This is exactly what this post describe. Every usb you have installed before can work without problem.

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