Lost USB to email push notification

Answers

For obvious security reasons, Windows has been disabling that sort of functionality in their latest systems (7 and above) for USB drives. This because hackers developed a technique of dropping infected USB sticks in all sorts of common rooms, hoping that someone would plug them into their machines trying to see who the owner was. The hacker then hoped that the unsuspecting user would allow the autorun to proceed, which would then be totally free to do its infection work.

There are specialized flash drives that present themselves as CD-Rom drives. Like the U3 drives in the article I linked to. Though I believe they haven't been made in years. Autoplay is still enabled by default for CD-rom drives.

There are ways to enable autorun on windows 7 and above machines (here for instance), but of course this needs to be done manually beforehand by anyone who wants to actively breach their security in this way (or by a network sysadmin for a company network, though I imagine very few people would actively poke an unnecessary hole in their security like that).

In other words: for recent Windows installations, the answer is for all intents and purposes "no". For older Windows installations, yes:

1) Create an autoplay file

2) Write (or otherwise procure) a program that phones home with the required information

3) Hope that anyone inserting the stick into his machine allows the software to run.

NOTE! This is something no-one should want to do, no matter how good the intentions! One would be actively offending people's privacy and security BIGTIME by sending their ip/machine info to somewhere else. IF anyone would want to do this, said one should make sure to inform the user who inserted the drive about what you are going to "send home" and give them ample opportunity to opt out.

So yeah... It may be possible do accomplish your tasks, but a better solution would be to just staple the USB sticks to your brother so he doesn't lose them.

SadBunny

Posted 2015-01-16T02:12:21.800

Reputation: 1 246

As SadBunny states, it's a security issue for the finder of the drive, and if returned, it might have malware. Buy 5-packs of cheap drives, or put a label on the outside, "Lost by [brother's name here]", and hope he'll be too embarrassed to lose it. – DrMoishe Pippik – 2015-01-16T03:48:07.540

You mean, have it "phone home" every time it is inserted in a PC with the host's ip-address, computer id and such? You could use "autorun.inf" and the AutoPlay functionality, but for obvious security reasons Windows has been disabling that sort of functionality in their latest systems (7 and above).

http://www.samlogic.net/articles/autorun-usb-flash-drive-windows-7.htm Luckily the numbers of people using XP/Vista and below are rapidly decreasing, so this way of "usb drop" hacking attack is less and less promising.

– SadBunny – 2015-01-16T02:39:24.060

Yes, the autorun is what I'm looking for. Is there another solution? @SadBunny – Napster – 2015-01-16T02:53:55.933

Let me write this as an answer. – SadBunny – 2015-01-16T03:03:21.780

As said by @SadBunny, any program who does that automatically will be labled by an anti-virus as trojan. One that is not automatic though may exist and work well although perhaps not emailimg and rather reporting back to a server. It can be as simple as an HTML file containing a javascript which sends host info to a server. – Mahdi – 2015-01-16T03:19:03.067

Still you would need it to autorun or auto-open something. If you're in fact well-intentioned though and you would find a way to do this, the ethical way to handle this would be to open a static page saying "DEAR FINDER! This USB stick belongs to me and contains personal files. It would be highly appreciated if you would contact me on x@y.com so we can arrange for me to get my USB stick back. Thanks in advance for your trouble!" – SadBunny – 2015-01-16T03:21:54.730

The kid is supposed to open the "call home" agent. – Mahdi – 2015-01-16T04:30:35.740

Besides the answer and comments mentioned, you might want to consider a device attachment like trackr.

– Darius – 2015-01-16T11:46:40.237