The Anti-virus Times

Tuesday, June 6, 2017

You already know that clicking on a link in an email can get your system infected with encryption ransomware, and giving your flash drive to your kid for the day can land you with a Trojan on your computer. But these are situations where the computers and removable media have already been in use for some time. Should newly purchased flash drives and hard drives be scanned for malware?

A cross-platform Trojan on a flash drive from a renowned and well-respected company is an ideal method of infection.

Interestingly, the company doesn't recommend to users that they clean the flash drives with an anti-virus scanner but advises them to "securely destroy the USB flash drive so that it cannot be reused".

How could a malicious file end up on the removable drives?

There are several possibilities:

1. Negligence on the part of a contractor who failed to scan the removable media image before it was put to use.
2. Negligence on the part of a contractor who failed to scan the removable media image before it was put to use.
3. An anti-virus failed to detect the malicious file because the infection hadn't yet been examined in an anti-virus laboratory.
4. And, unfortunately, there is also the possibility that someone deliberately compromised entire shipments of the removable media.

Can one prevent a system from getting infected?

Let's get back to the news. The Trojan didn't compromise the storage arrays but the computers that were used to configure them. Regular Anti-virus Times readers already know that Trojans can't infect other files and can only get onto a flash drive if someone or another program copies them to the media. And this means that to prevent unknown Trojans from infecting your flash drives, you should just make sure that no extra files get onto them.

Dr.Web detects the Trojan in question as Trojan.Inject1.10883 and, therefore, it poses no threat to computers that are protected by our anti-virus.