Whenever you use either a USB flash drive or some other external device on computers other than your own, that of friends, at school or some other public place like a cybercafé, you expose your devices to viruses.
USB shortcut virus is often the term used to classify these viruses, although a most accurate description would be that of a worm, because they are malicious programs capable of automatically spread themselves from one computer to another.
Being as it is, USB flash drives become an important source of infection, allowing the virus to “jump” from one computer to another. As soon as one computer is infected, all devices plugged into it will become infected as well, allowing the spread to continue.
Usually, antivirus programs are capable of protecting us against this kind of infections, therefore computers already infected with them are the ones without a proper antivirus installed. That’s why they are often found at public places such as schools, cybercafés or business networks.
This infection will simply replace all files present on the USB flash drive with shortcuts that once the user double-clicks on them, start the virus. These USB virus aim exclusively at Windows systems.
The main issue is that the affected user thinks he/she has lost all files, when in reality they have just been copied to another location and have been hidden (therefore they are only visible after changing settings on folder’s properties).
In most cases these files can be retrieved with the help of simple, effective and free disinfection tools.
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