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I’ve added a new category for security related issues today.

A few days ago I talked about EXE files and briefly expressed how dangerous they can be.  Another security issue that just caught my attention is USB devices.  Don’t ever accept a “Free” USB device and connect it to your computer.  Why?  because USB devices can be configured to store EXE files.

Here is one link about how a USB device can be used to protect yourself at internet cafe’s.

anonymous.livelyblog.com – tor usb keystick

Notice in the first paragraph: It includes a non-open-source .exe file, which is my eyes makes it not worth trusting

Take my word for it. EXE files can be bad. They can execute anything from wiping your hard drive, to watching your keystrokes on your computer, to causing your computer to act as spam email server, to causing unforeseen cpu usage or other annoying or legally damaging things.

ok.  I’m going to get on my soap box for a minute and talk abot how bad EXE files are. 

EXE files are sometimes used for Self Decrypting Archives or Self Extracting Archives.

If you have ever used open source software you may have noticed that the developers offer a MD5 hash of the executable file.  They have a very good reason for doing this.  The reason is that they want to be sure that you only run a executable that they know is safe and is intended to do what is supposed to do and hasn’t been replaced by someone who has less than honerable intentions.

Never trust a EXE file unless you can prove that it hasn’t been modified.

I’ll talk more about this later.