USB Port Device Filter, Norton Antivirus

I was just wondering if anyone knew whether Norton Internet Security/Antivirus had a USB Device Filter/Scanner feature that I could enable? Something that could possibly block a USB device from being read first before scanning and opening, and only after scanning will enable it to interface...

I have a USB thumbdrive which I have been using on my notebook and Norton did not detect any virus on it. But when I transferred a file to my friend's notebook (which uses AVG or Kapersky I think), it automatically detected a trojan on my thumbdrive which it deleted.

Is there a feature for Norton like this...

Thanks...

 

There are options to set scan exclusions... and I remember seeing having the option to set it for a device or something..

Check the "help" pages from within NIS.. its there..

 

Is there a possibility for Norton to overlook and miss USB device viruses? Because it surely didn't detect a trojan on my thumbdrive the other day. I had an issue too before, when a colleague used my notebook and plugged in his Sony portable hard drive which had hidden viruses. Once it was plugged in, the viruses took effect even before I could run a scan on Norton. Is there a way to block USB device ports, and scanning them, before allowing them into my system?

 

Disable the Auto-Play function from XP/ Vista.
You can choose which files are allowed to "Autoplay" like music or video files and exclude others.
Cheers.

 

Alright thanks...I haven't tried it with any USB thumbdrive yet...but will it still show "Removable Disk" on Computer? Even if I do disable autoplay, it would still run and open the removable disk. Do you guys use any antivirus plugin or something which prevents this from happening? Sorry for all the questions guys...just want to make sure that situation doesn't happen to me again...

Thanks...

 

Is this a question or a statement?
Normally, if you disable Autoplay, the device (external HDD or USB stick) will show up in Explorer as a Removable Disk.
What do you mean with " it would still run and open the disk"?.

 

Hi Steelroots7xe,

This Mike from the Norton Authorized Support Team.

Both Norton AntiVirus and Internet Security version 2008 (and 2009) do have the option to either enable or disable the scanning of removable media under the "General Settings."

If this option is enabled, along with the Auto-Protect feature it will scan the contents of the drive once it is recognized by Windows.

There are no features in either Norton product that would stop Windows from recognizing the drive prior to it being scanned.

As to "why" it did not detect the infection when you inserted the USB drive, the most likely cause is that that feature to scan removable media was disabled. Therefore, even though the default, real-time "Auto-Protect" feature may have been enabled, the external drive, or the files on that drive would not have been scanned until executed.

Besides enabling the settings I mentioned, making sure that LiveUpdate is up to date is your best bet for keeping infections at bay. In the 2008 and 2009 versions, it is highly recommended that that "Automatic" LiveUpdate option is chosen. Even with this option enabled you can still manually run LiveUpdate at any time.

Thank you,
Mike