Bitdefender USB Immunizer: Protect Windows From Autorun.inf Threats

Windows users always had to deal with malware which spreads by exploiting the autorun feature. Some of the most notorious malware including the famous Conficker worm exploited this feature of Windows to spread across so fast. Microsoft introduced the autorun feature back with Windows XP to help software installers run automatically. This feature was developed to help the non-techie computer users easily install software. Apparently, malware writers and cyber-criminals started exploiting this feature to rapidly infect Windows.

Microsoft has released Fix it solutions to disable autorun in Windows, but that’s not enough to secure Windows from the autorun.inf threats. Even if autorun is disabled, if a user double-clicks on an external infected device, like a USB flash drive infected by the autorun.inf malware, Windows will get infected by the malware.

Most antivirus solutions scans external devices before the user can use it. But, if you are using a free antivirus solution which doesn’t have this feature, you may be open to threats. For protecting your Windows operating system from the autorun-based threats, you will need BitDefender USB Immunizer.

BitDefender USB Immunizer disables autorun-based threats even before they can access your PC. USB Immunizer is a freeware, portable application. After downloading it, double-click on the USB Immunizer executable and accept the terms.

Once you have launched it, it will constantly watch out for newly inserted USB storage devices and immunize them on the fly. Even if you insert a USB flash drive which is infected by an autorun-based malware, your PC will not auto-execute the malware. Thus your PC will remain malware free.

If you have immunized your USB drive, on which you have installed a portable application launcher, you will notice that the launcher will not automatically start. This is because once you immunize your USB flash drive, you will not be able again create the autorun.inf file, neither can any other application. Actually, you will also not be able to delete the autorun.inf file created by USB Immunizer.

If USB Immunizer is running in the background and you’ve selected the Automatically immunize USB drives box in Options, then every time a non-immunized USB flash drive is plugged into the computer will be automatically immunized.

In fact if you need to remove the immunization by deleting the specially attributed autorun.inf file created by USB Immunizer, BitDefender recommends you to boot from a Linux Live CD or use a Mac OS X system to delete the file.

USB Immunizer is available in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Thai, Vietnamese, Polish, Farsi, German, French and Romanian languages. You won’t find any setting to change the language used by the program USB Immunizer. It automatically detects the “Current Location” in the Region and Language settings and displays the user interface in the language which is most appropriate.

You can download the latest version of USB Immunizer from the BitDefender website.