Another Windows 7 (and Vista) tip

[johnridley]

I was just reminded that I have never turned off Autoplay on Win 7. I consider autoplay to be the very spawn of the devil; it is a bad idea all around. Under XP, you can disable it with TweakUI, but I hadn't gotten around to figuring out how to do it under 7. Anyway, here's how (stolen from some web site or other)

• Type gpedit.msc in the Start Search box (or Start -> Run if you are using Windows XP), and then press ENTER to open the Group Policy Editor.
  
• Under Computer Configuration, expand Administrative Templates, expand Windows Components > click Autoplay Policies.
  
• In the RHS Details pane, double-click Turn off Autoplay to open the Properties box.
  
• Click Enabled, and then select All drives in the Turn off Autoplay on box to disable Autorun on all drives.
  
• Restart.
  

Comments

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

Autoplay is what causes Windows (and maybe other OSs) to automatically do something when you insert new media. For instance, when you insert a CD, the computer might run the software on that CD.

The reason it's bad is that you have no idea what's on that CD. Autoplay is how Sony installed their rootkit on PCs on those music CDs - insert the music CD, it installs a rootkit on your machine completely invisibly.

Someone did a test a couple of years ago where they took thumb drives and put software on them that would just report back to a central server that it had been run. Then they spread those around in waiting areas of companies that they were doing penetration testing on. Many of those programs reported back.

The problem with that is, once those programs run, they could do ANYTHING - including installing spyware that could live on the machines in that company for months/years, giving a bad guy full access to any files that computer had access to, spying on what was on their screen, what they typed on the keyboard.