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#46
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Where have all the cheap USB thumb drives gone?
On 04/12/2018 04.29, Paul wrote:
nospam wrote: In article , Mayayana wrote: | The problem with DVDs is that after a few years, even if you never touch | them, the data starts getting lost. Good brands only delay the inevitable. Â* People often say that but I've never seen it happen. so, because you haven't seen it happen, it must not happen to anyone else. makes sense. I've only had it happen on some Memorex CDRW. One of them was nearly completely transparent after three months (not sitting in the sun either). My DVDs have behaved well. I don't have any of these, but these might be worth trying. The promotional material claims 1000 year life, but I would expect the polycarbonate exterior to degrade before the 1000 years is up. The recording layer might well last that long. https://www.amazon.com/M-DISC-Perman.../dp/B005Y4NKE0 I have, but blue rays, not dvds. They are more expensive than the normal variety. I have many written good quality DVD stored for years, and I believe they work. USB sticks also degrade, the data can disappear. -- Cheers, Carlos. |
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#47
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Where have all the cheap USB thumb drives gone?
On 03/12/2018 23.56, Mayayana wrote:
"Chris" wrote | Technically there's no difference between a DVD and a stick in terms of | malware. A malware can just easily copy itself to/from a stick as it can a | DVD. | It would have to do that during the disk write. It can't just copy itself to a read-only disk that's put into the drive. A stick, on the other hand, acts like a hard disk. So if Peter copies images to a stick while he has malware running, the malware might detect that and copy itself. If he does something like direct Imgburn to ccopy the images, the malware would have to somehow insert itself into Imgburn's list of files *and* have Imgburn also write an autorun file. As for copying itself from the disk, I don't see how it would do that without an autorun program. If you open a disk in Explorer without any executable, and copy JPGs, there's nothing to run. That may also be true of sticks. I don't know. I'm hesitant to trust it because it's like plugging in a hard disk. The data storage is dynamic. The operating system should not run anything automatically on media you connect, be it a disk, an usb stick, or optical media. So copying files from any media should be safe (even if some file is infected, as long as nothing automatically loads them, including disk content indexers). That said, some of the files may be executables which you may eventually run; or they may be compromised data files which you may load at some point. But the danger is the same no matter how you got the files. The danger with unknown usb sticks is a compromised firmware of the stick. But I don't think normal people will see them. On institutions they block usb sticks, but they similarly would block a dvd. They consider email safer because they have scanners, but you know that they only detect known (relatively old) malware. And of course, I'm assuming that the computers will never run automatically anything on external media that you connect. -- Cheers, Carlos. |
#48
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Where have all the cheap USB thumb drives gone?
"Carlos E.R." wrote
| The danger with unknown usb sticks is a compromised firmware of the | stick. But I don't think normal people will see them. | But why be so confident that sharing drives might not expose you to a firmware bug? It's not possible on a DVD or CD. A DVD/CD is just a simple data recording. It's read-only. How could that not be safer? In other words, even aside from firmware bugs, if you share a stick it could possibly pick up malware. If you share a DVD-R there's no way to transfer data onto it. (Can something write to it after it's been written and closed? I doubt it. That would certainly be a challenging trick, as compared with just copying to a stick.) That means that we're not just talking about running executables. If I were to give you a stick I'd tell you to keep it. Any EXEs, DOCs, PDFs, DLLs, etc can't be assumed to be the same files when I get the stick back. I don't know what's on your system. I don't know who you've shared it with. That's not a risk with a DVD/CD. |
#49
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Where have all the cheap USB thumb drives gone?
Mayayana wrote:
"Carlos E.R." wrote | The danger with unknown usb sticks is a compromised firmware of the | stick. But I don't think normal people will see them. | But why be so confident that sharing drives might not expose you to a firmware bug? It's not possible on a DVD or CD. A DVD/CD is just a simple data recording. It's read-only. How could that not be safer? It's read-only for the receiver, but they need to trust whoever wrote to it. There have been many cases where malware was transmitted via optical media. Most notoriously was Sony iirc. If a DVD has malware on it there's no way to remove it. |
#50
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Where have all the cheap USB thumb drives gone?
"Chris" wrote
| But why be so confident that sharing drives might not | expose you to a firmware bug? It's not possible on a DVD | or CD. A DVD/CD is just a simple data recording. It's | read-only. How could that not be safer? | | It's read-only for the receiver, but they need to trust whoever wrote to | it. There have been many cases where malware was transmitted via optical | media. Most notoriously was Sony iirc. | | If a DVD has malware on it there's no way to remove it. | Now you're really grasping at straws. I guess you must own stocks in stick companies. |
#51
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Where have all the cheap USB thumb drives gone?
On 4-12-2018 4:29, Paul wrote:
nospam wrote: In article , Mayayana wrote: | The problem with DVDs is that after a few years, even if you never touch | them, the data starts getting lost. Good brands only delay the inevitable. People often say that but I've never seen it happen. so, because you haven't seen it happen, it must not happen to anyone else. makes sense. I've only had it happen on some Memorex CDRW. One of them was nearly completely transparent after three months (not sitting in the sun either). My DVDs have behaved well. I don't have any of these, but these might be worth trying. The promotional material claims 1000 year life, but I would expect the polycarbonate exterior to degrade before the 1000 years is up. The recording layer might well last that long. https://www.amazon.com/M-DISC-Perman.../dp/B005Y4NKE0 Paul I have a complete dvd 9 seasons Startrek Voyager destroyed by record layer rot. 1000 years? No way. Caused by oxygen leakage through the paint layer. The aluminum layer does not like contact with air. It oxidizes. |
#52
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Where have all the cheap USB thumb drives gone?
Mayayana wrote:
"Chris" wrote | But why be so confident that sharing drives might not | expose you to a firmware bug? It's not possible on a DVD | or CD. A DVD/CD is just a simple data recording. It's | read-only. How could that not be safer? | | It's read-only for the receiver, but they need to trust whoever wrote to | it. There have been many cases where malware was transmitted via optical | media. Most notoriously was Sony iirc. | | If a DVD has malware on it there's no way to remove it. | Now you're really grasping at straws. I guess you must own stocks in stick companies. This is an example of corporate shenanigans on optical media. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Copy_Protection "XCP.Sony.Rootkit" There have been others of these as well. Paul |
#53
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Where have all the cheap USB thumb drives gone?
"Paul" wrote
| | If a DVD has malware on it there's no way to remove it. | | | | Now you're really grasping at straws. I guess | you must own stocks in stick companies. | | This is an example of corporate shenanigans on optical media. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Copy_Protection | Yes, but this discussion was never about the possibility of malware on a CD. Obviously anything can be on a CD. The context was what's a more secure way to transfer files? It's assumed that you put the files on the CD and you're giving them to a friend. In that context, a CD/DVD is safer in a number of ways. It's harder for malware on your computer to write itself to the CD. It harder for it to transfer to the next computer. And there's no worry about anything from computer #2 being written back to the read-only CD. So it can be safely shared with numerous people. I can't believe this discussion has gone this far among such a knowledgeable group of people. I can only guess that some people are very much enamored of sticks and don't want to admit to their risks. |
#54
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Where have all the cheap USB thumb drives gone?
On 06/12/2018 20.21, Mayayana wrote:
"Paul" wrote | | If a DVD has malware on it there's no way to remove it. | | | | Now you're really grasping at straws. I guess | you must own stocks in stick companies. | | This is an example of corporate shenanigans on optical media. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Copy_Protection | Yes, but this discussion was never about the possibility of malware on a CD. Obviously anything can be on a CD. The context was what's a more secure way to transfer files? It's assumed that you put the files on the CD and you're giving them to a friend. In that context, a CD/DVD is safer in a number of ways. It's harder for malware on your computer to write itself to the CD. It harder for it to transfer to the next computer. And there's no worry about anything from computer #2 being written back to the read-only CD. So it can be safely shared with numerous people. If the computer creating the CD is compromised, the files on the hard disk may be already compromised, and are recorded as is on the CD. Thus that CD is dangerous to the person receiving it. Remember that with some malware the antivirus itself is compromised and loses the ability to find out the malware on the files carrying it. I can't believe this discussion has gone this far among such a knowledgeable group of people. I can only guess that some people are very much enamored of sticks and don't want to admit to their risks. No, I understand. I mostly use Linux, so this problem barely affects me. But I also use Windows, and I'm very careful with it. I have never been infected - except with the first two virus invented (somewhere in the 80's), we did not know yet what that thing was. And I want to keep my Windows safe. If I receive any file (to load on Windows) I act paranoid, no matter how I got it: email, CD, stick... -- Cheers, Carlos. |
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