USB Guardian

USB Guardian is a very small Windows app that helps to protect against virus software spread over universal serial bus ports. Considering that countless computers have become infected with worms and other malware as a result of people transferring dangerous files with flash drives, the need for this kind of software is quickly becoming apparent.

In some cases, system administrators have thought of machines as completely safe since they're not connected to the web. These machines are still vulnerable to USB-based attack vectors, however. This software allows users to copy files to and from USB flash drives without having to worry about catching an infection from them.

Best of all, it's effective against dozens of different types of malware. It stops all worms based on Conficker, which includes Kido!, Downandup, Downadup and several other variants. These attacked over 9 million machines the last time anyone was able to do any accounting.

While you don't often see Windows 9x machines in production environments any longer, this app will run on anything that boots to Windows ME or better. That makes it particularly attractive for retro gamers who want to restore old hardware but might be concerned about ages-old infections attacking them.

While it doesn't preserve resource forks very well, this normally shouldn't be a problem for those who are transferring files only from various Wintel machines.

The interface is quite simple and the program runs as a single executable, so it shouldn't be too hard for anyone to figure out.