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.

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.

"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.

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.

"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.

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.

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

"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.

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.