X14U2NVX

A few days back, I had a laptop with a couple trojans on it. As I didn't want to take the time to individually hunt down viruses, I decided to re-image my laptop. However, before I re-imaged it, I hooked my droid into it so I could use it as a Mass-Storage Device to save a few documents that were important. Yesterday, I had hooked my droid into a friend's computer (to charge), and today his computer won't boot, possibly because of viruses. Is there any way these viruses could have been transferred by my droid (it shows no symptoms itself, so would that make it a "carrier" of the computer virus), and if so, what would be a recommended way to get rid of them?

EDIT: In order to finish the diagnosis, I am going to plug my droid back into my (newly imaged) laptop tonight, and if it gets infected, I will know for sure. Still, if you have any feedback as to a solution for removing viruses from the droid itself, please let me know.

Last edited by X14U2NVX; January 19th, 2012 at 09:03 AM.

darkuni

Any removable media type device can be a carrier of viruses - especially if the virus payload creates an AUTOPLAY file along with the offending executable. This could cause the virus to install directly on a PC with autorun turned on (many of them are this way by default) without a SINGLE prompt to the user.

Pretty easy to spot something naughty on your phone:

1) Is there an exe/bat file sitting on your Android's root folder? Those aren't for Android, so they are probably PC malware of some sort.

2) Is there an AUTORUN file sitting on the root? If so, it's probably malicious of intent.

3) Plug the phone in, let it mount as a drive, and point your favorite, reliable virus checker at it. It should help you out.

X14U2NVX

Thank you for your assistance, is there any other place an autorun executable could be on my droid? Or is it limited to the root folder? Also, could I use the file explorer on the droid to remove the virus, to protect the computer?

darkuni

The autorun.inf file must reside on the root, however - it can point to an EXE file ANYWHERE on the device - so if you find the .inf file, open it and see where the file is that it runs.

X14U2NVX

Will try this when I get home, Thank you for the tips (I'd try it now, but my cord is home).