How do I scan a flash drive?

Hi guys.. I was given a flash drive in order to copy some pdf documents.

The thing is: how do I scan it? Because once I plug it it, it automatically becomes a drive on my computer.

Of course I can do an on demand scan, but there are many hacking tools like USB swiss army knife that grab your passwords and dump them in a file immediately after you plug it in with and autoexec or something.


any ideas?

thanks

What do you mean by `scan'?

If you want to copy some files, having it as a drive is what you want right?


If you don't want disks or drives to autorun on inserting them, hold the shift key while putting them in your PC. This goes for both CD/DVD's and USB drives.

If you are worried that the drive may be infected, you could always check it from an operating system less likely to be effected by the potentially dangerous files. An example would be to download a linux live cd, install the f-prot scanner, scan the file and it will report any potential problems. If the scan detects any infections it will tell you, and you would simply use that tool (or any number of other linux antivirus tools) to remove the file(s). Once thats done, you reboot, take out the live cd, then boot back to your regular old desktop environment knowing the flash drive is safe to use.

Some simple instructions can be found here

Itsacon: Thanks! Didn't know about the shift thing!

Stang: Cool.. I'm getting knoppix right now. Thank you so much!

Also, if you really talk about virus scan, the fact that flash is mounted and that windows explorer opens it's root directory does not mean that any potencial virus will infect your system. Any potencial virus needs to be started in some way.

Right.. but what about some vbs script.. or autolaunch?

I guess that holding shift while plugging it in can disable any malicious autolaunch.

what I did was use sandboxie and sandboxie the whole drive and then scan...