News - Microsoft rethinks AutoPlay to counter growing threat of malware
Quote:
AutoRun to become limited to non-removable optical media, says Microsoft.
Read more.
Re: News - Microsoft rethinks AutoPlay to counter growing threat of malware
Autorun was introduced in Win95 wasnt it? And then needlessly complicated in XP.
Re: News - Microsoft rethinks AutoPlay to counter growing threat of malware
How about only letting signed apps autorun?
Re: News - Microsoft rethinks AutoPlay to counter growing threat of malware
Bad idea - you wouldn't believe how reliant users are on Autorun - our customers would probably log a support call if the DVD menu failed to show up because it's not signed (i don't even want to imagine the fun of getting every build signed too)
Re: News - Microsoft rethinks AutoPlay to counter growing threat of malware
Quote:
Originally Posted by
HEXUS
AutoRun to become limited to non-removable optical media, says Microsoft.[/url].
Can someone give me an example of a non-removable optical media?
Re: News - Microsoft rethinks AutoPlay to counter growing threat of malware
I don't even use autoplay - disable it as soon as I install a new OS. Possibly my problem with it stems from it slowing down my previous computer - everything just sortof froze for a few seconds and I couldn't do anything; plus if I plug in a portable HDD, it tries to search through the whole disk to find the stupid autorun file, which of course doesn't even exist. Yes I could only autorun for DVDs, but it's just easier to do without, plus then I know what's going on.
Re: News - Microsoft rethinks AutoPlay to counter growing threat of malware
You mean automatically running anything and everything you stuck in the drive wasn't a good idea?
Who'd a thunk?
Re: News - Microsoft rethinks AutoPlay to counter growing threat of malware
Holy cow , batman!
I didn;t know this was what malware were upto these days! What next, replacing the BIOS/?
Re: News - Microsoft rethinks AutoPlay to counter growing threat of malware
Hardly.
Using Autorun is a very basic attack vector. It's the sort of thing that is so glaringly obvious, that no-one actually thought about disabling it until now.
Re: News - Microsoft rethinks AutoPlay to counter growing threat of malware
I think OilSheikh might have been using sarcasm there, seeing as CIH corrupted the BIOS of some infected machines over ten years ago.
Re: News - Microsoft rethinks AutoPlay to counter growing threat of malware
We use the following registry key at work to prevent AutoRun from working. Works fantastically well at stopping viruses that propagate via USB flash drives. More info here.
Code:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\IniFileMapping\Autorun.inf]
""="@SYS:DoesNotExist"
N.B. When messing around with AutoRun settings be careful not to disable 'Auto Insert Notification' as this prevents Windows from detecting when discs are inserted/ejected.
Re: News - Microsoft rethinks AutoPlay to counter growing threat of malware
Autoplay in Vista is a joke - "are you sure you want to continue"!!!!
Re: News - Microsoft rethinks AutoPlay to counter growing threat of malware
Get TweakUI (a microsoft powertoy) and disable it. One of the first things I do on a new PC.
But the autorun on Vista & Win7 are fine. They don't automatically launch the exe specified in autorun.ini. Instead they, pop up a message asking you if you want to launch it or not. A much better approach IMHO.