Removable media- hidden viruses

As part of my KTD-Project I purchase several different type of Removable media.  USB drives, SD cards and the such.  I recently got one that was infected by "8 Gigabytes" of something which had virus like coding on it.

It was a simple 32 GB USB Thumb drive, but as I put it in my USB Port, my anti virus wouldn't let the driver for it load.   Hmmm, that's curious.  So I looked at the drive a different way.  I booted into safe mode and then put the drive in the port and opened it's properties.  It was a 32GB drive that already had 8.2 GB of "Something" on it.

Tha "Something" didn't show when the drive was open, even though my system is setup to show me ALL my files including hidden and system files.  But it wouldn't show me what was hidden on this particular thumbdrive.

I called a friend and following his advice I opened a Hex Editor and looked at the drive that way.

As I told my friend what I found, he told me "STOP!"  That drive is virused!

So together we worked out how to use one of my much older systems to low level format it like it was an old style IDE Drive, then format it with Windows.

I now have a "Blank" 32GB drive, and I contacted the company I bought it from to let them know.  They were so happy I let them know, they gave me a partial refund of the purchase price.

And No I won't give out their name as they are only purchasing this type of drive from 2 different suppliers, and reselling it.  They are now pulling spot checks on their stock and are contacting their suppliers to find out how this happened, and how to ensure it hopefully doesn't happen again.

So, if you don't have your Anti-virus setup to scan ALL of your drives, including your removable drives, you need to change your settings so it does.  Plus make sure you run DAILY Virus Scans.  I've posted about the various programs I use and the schedule I use.  In fact Next week I'll probably be on the netbook for a few days, as my detail scans are due for running, and they take 2 to 3 days to run with all the hard drive space I have (Over 5 TB).

If you don't know how to change your settings to scan all of your drives including removable storage devices, contact your A/V's company and check their support forums.

Or you can post a comment and I'll try to help you.

Remember you want Daily virus scans and you want ANYTHING that plugs into your computer scanned.  Yes it slows my computer down some by having everything scanned, but I'd rather my computer be a bit slower than to get hit with a virus or malware.