NY Times article re Ceedo / PowerToGo Software

[jpapier]

Greetings,

Since, like many of you, I am engaged in the never-ending struggle to keep library desktops secure yet user-friendly, a recent article in the NY Times' technology section caught my eye: http://tinyurl.com/fqolr

Long story short, Ceedo and PowerToGo software will enable flash drive users to drop apps on their flash drive, and run them from that drive on
any PC.

This adds a whole new wrinkle to security. Will there be an easy way to block executables from running via the flash drive, while still enabling patrons to retrieve .docs, .jpgs, etc. from their drive?

Wondering,

Jeff

[spragers]

We use Fortres on our public computers, and simply tell it not to allow applications to run fromany drive letters. This covers flash drives, since they get assigned a new drive letter when they get plugged in. You could probably do this just as easily with group policies or registry hacks.

[jpapier]

I was thinking that XP Pro could let you do it via group policy. But would this work on flash-based "programs", such as AOL Express? Currently folks can't run this from our PCs because we've blocked the pages from which you can load it....

[Philip - Long Beach NY]

In a limited account, no user can execute a downloaded program to the hard drive. If a USB drive allows a program to run, use TrustNoExe. It won't allow any programs, other than the ones you want to give to your patrons to execute - no matter where the executible is launching from, cd-rom drive, usb etc.. It can be found here.

http://www.beyondlogic.org/solutions/tr ... no-exe.htm

It also allows a customizable message to be displayed to the user telling them why their program won't run. (You don't want to know what mine says )

Hope this helps?

Philip

[jpapier]

Thanks, I will definitely check it out.... JP