Monday, October 13, 2008

Nice Computer Virus

I have a 4 GB Flash disk, and I use that mainly at my home and only in Linux in both Desktop and laptop. Regularly, I delete all the unused files, and keep only whatever is necessary for me.

Whenever I want to take printouts, I copy my files in that, and take it to the nearest cybercafe for printing. Every time, he scans my flash disk for any virus. Almost every time, His virus scanner recognizes Virus in my flash disk. I never understood that, and told him that, I was using Linux, and cleaning up all the unused files regularly. It is impossible to get virus in that. But, he never agreed to that. I have backup of all the files, so, I asked him to clean it up, and take the printout. He cleaned it up and then printed. It happened multiple times.

For the last two months or so, I have not cleaned up my flash disk. After I took a printout last time, the behavior of Auto Run is changed for the flash disk. I ignored it for 2-3 times. But, after that, I examined the files, and realized that there are few extra files for autorun and others. I deleted all those files, and after that, my flash disk's auto run started working normally. I remembered another change in the behavior of my flash disk. In Windows, the directories are not visible. If I explicitly type f:\krishna in the location bar, it opens the files normally. I never bothered about, why those folders were not visible in Windows. But, when I investigated further, I realized that hidden attribute is set to those folders, and this behavior is recent, i.e., after I started taking printouts by using that flash disk.

This is the reasoning that I came up with all this. The cybercafe's system has a virus in it's Virus scanner. Whenever any flash disk is inserted, it shows a message saying that there is a virus in the flash disk. When selected for cleaning, it just creates few virus files, and/or changes the attributes of the files. It gives the impression to the person that, his system is very secure, and the flash disk has a virus. Where as it is the other way. I don't know when these people will realize the security of Linux.

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