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In my previous post, I’ve talked about disabling your USB ports to prevent data theft when you are not around. By disabling the USB ports, any USB storage media like USB pen drive and external hard drive will not be detected by Windows but still allowing your USB mouse and keyboard to function.
Other than disabling USB ports, you can try another method which is disabling the write access to USB storage devices. By doing this, you make the USB storage devices read-only. You can read the file from the USB drive but you can’t copy any files into it. There are two ways to disable the write access. One is by implementing the registry hack manually and second is by using a software. Using a software is easier and less tedious than searching through the registry area.
ThumbScrew : USB Write Blocker
Thumbscrew is a freeware Windows application that allows you to quickly enable or disable writing to all USB storage devices. This light weight tool stay in your system tray and have two icons to indicate whether or one USB storage devices are set to be read only :
Here is the Windows error message upon copy attempt:
Download ThumbScrew Now | 233KB
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Wow, I had never even heard of this before! That’s sweet man! Thanks for the info!
This will really come in handy
[...] Steve has got a nice article on disabling writing to USB Devices [...]
comes handy to me. hey, i want to post this at my blog. will give credits to you. thanks!!!!
Aseem Kishore , Madhur Kapoor > Glad both of you found this useful.
Hanep > A link love is cool. Thanks.
i would also like to mention about this utility…will give u a a link back…i hope u don’t have any problem on that if yes then let me know.
abhishek > go ahead, I have no problem with that.
[...] Disable Writing to USB Storage Devices to Combat Data Theft – My Tech Quest [...]
[...] Yesterday, I found a cool utility called Thumbscrew : USB Write Blocker , you can use this utility to disable writing to your USB drive. You can read full review about the utility here [...]
Appreciate your efforts.
thank you very much.
[...] Disabling Writing to USB Storage Devices to Combat Data Theft [...]
[...] the organization from realizing the benefits of the USB port. A better alternative, he says, is to disable only the functions of the USB port that allow it to be written to. The writer then provides step-by-step instructions on doing so and flags three possible [...]
Virustotal gives it a 4/33..4 antiviruses found it infected
CAT-QuickHeal 9.50 2008.06.18 I-Worm.Sohanad.fa
eSafe 7.0.15.0 2008.06.18 suspicious Trojan/Worm
Ikarus T3.1.1.26.0 2008.06.18 Worm.Win32.AutoIt.d
NOD32v2 3197 2008.06.18 archive damaged
please confirm that it is okay, as it sounds like a very useful tool
It doesn’t work when I click on the link it takes me here and this is what I get thanks for nothing
No reference to Thumb screw at below site
Uhhhm… It ain’t there dude.
It could be you got this 404, 403 or 401 because of hotlink protections, try visiting the main site:
http://irongeek.com
If you still have issues email Irongeek.
It’s much easier with just downloading this software (www.utilsforge.com/medialocker/) and click a button.
this features may come handy at cyber cafe i think..
me too think that way. handy for cyber cafe owners..
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