We had one of our computers infected by CTB-Locker virus. We opened a thumbdrive on our other computer only to find out later the virus had lay dormant on that one. It later infected that computer when we tried to back-up pictures from it. My question is if we opened a thumbdrive when the virus was not yet activated on the second computer, will the thumbdrive now be infected?
Thanks,
RonVe
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Good morning and welcome to Webroot.
The CTB-Locker virus has been around for ages in one shape or another. Just when you think it is gone it comes back with some force. Fortunately virtually every Antivirus on the planet knows about this bug and will block it accordingly. However there are several problems with this bug that make it rather nasty.
This virus can only be spread when accessing a file that has been infected. It not self morphing so this is a good thing. Problem is that when it does infect it also encrypts files and this is where it becomes a challenge. Removing the bug is rather easy but after a file is encrypted it is basically useless (Unless you pay the ransom they demand). This is where you need to access a good backup to restore this data.
As for the thumbdrive, best practice is to place this drive on a PC that has active Antivirus running but do NOT do a scan on it. Scanning actually can spread the virus in this case. Best practice is format the thumbdrive. What this does is completely destroys any and all on the thumbdrive so it is fresh and clean. Do a full format, not a quick because technically a quick format just kills and recreates the partition and creates a new boot table. This will not make the drive clean.
So the short answer is: If this thumbdrive was used on a computer that had the virus and you placed files on the thumbdrive then there is a fairly good chance it is now infected. However if you do the above like I mentioned the thumbdrive can come back into a usable state. Any data on that thumbdrive I would consider lost and not usable so the formatting will do no harm.
Good luck to you and feel free to let us know how it works out for ya.
The CTB-Locker virus has been around for ages in one shape or another. Just when you think it is gone it comes back with some force. Fortunately virtually every Antivirus on the planet knows about this bug and will block it accordingly. However there are several problems with this bug that make it rather nasty.
This virus can only be spread when accessing a file that has been infected. It not self morphing so this is a good thing. Problem is that when it does infect it also encrypts files and this is where it becomes a challenge. Removing the bug is rather easy but after a file is encrypted it is basically useless (Unless you pay the ransom they demand). This is where you need to access a good backup to restore this data.
As for the thumbdrive, best practice is to place this drive on a PC that has active Antivirus running but do NOT do a scan on it. Scanning actually can spread the virus in this case. Best practice is format the thumbdrive. What this does is completely destroys any and all on the thumbdrive so it is fresh and clean. Do a full format, not a quick because technically a quick format just kills and recreates the partition and creates a new boot table. This will not make the drive clean.
So the short answer is: If this thumbdrive was used on a computer that had the virus and you placed files on the thumbdrive then there is a fairly good chance it is now infected. However if you do the above like I mentioned the thumbdrive can come back into a usable state. Any data on that thumbdrive I would consider lost and not usable so the formatting will do no harm.
Good luck to you and feel free to let us know how it works out for ya.
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