USB Autorun malware on the wane

Here’s some good news in the ongoing fight against Windows-based malware – it appears that there has been a significant drop in the number of computers being infected by malware which exploits the Windows Autorun feature.

Autorun is the technology which makes a program start automatically when you insert a CD or USB stick into your Windows PC. You may have spotted the tell-tale Autorun.inf files in the root directory of your USB sticks and on CDs in the past.

Autorun may sound like it’s great for functionality, but a large amount of malware (the most notorious example would probably be the Conficker worm) has exploited the technology to infect computers via USB sticks in the past.

Earlier this year, Microsoft rolled out an update, effectively preventing Autorun malware…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.