This is a guest post written by Rono, one of our most faithful and prolific readers and commentators. What Rono forgot to mention about USBCop is that it’s open source! I’ve had a few problems with autorun files lately on my USB stick, so this program might be a very useful one.

The Autorun feature is a big security risk on the Windows operating system. It is a risk even if you are the only person accessing the computer. Remember the Sony rootkit incident a while ago? Guess how Sony managed to install the rootkit on the computer system? Autorun can be disabled in Windows and this is probably the way to go for most users.

There is however another solution in the form of the USB security software USB Cop which has been uploaded to SourceForge a few weeks ago. USB Cop blocks all attempts to run an autorun.inf file on the computer system. It will instead display the contents of the file to the user giving a recommendation what the user should do with it.

Available options are to browse the contents of the disk or to close the dialog without performing an action. The interface itself will display all entries that are located in the autorun.inf file.

The option to execute the autorun.inf file normally is missing from the available options. What this application currently does is block all attempts of running an autorun.inf file on the computer system. The only difference between disabling that option in Windows and using the software is the ability to browse and see the contents of the autorun.inf file a bit faster and automatic with the software. In reality it would simply mean a few additional clicks for the same result without running a software in the background all the time.

The software itself uses about 4.5 Megabytes of computer memory while running.