Scanning External Drives (USB keys in particular) before mounting them

anti-virusmalwaremountscanningusb

I need your help: it happens quite often to me that I have to mount drives coming from the most diverse sources and, sometimes, with quite a high risk of being infected with god knows what. As a consequence I deactivated auto mount and I usually format them before mounting them if I do not need to access their content, it is nonetheless quite common for me to need their content: I was wondering if there was any software able to scan them before mounting them; I remember that when I was on windows some antivirus were able to do so (probably mounting them to some sandbox I suppose) and I was wondering if there was any alternative software able to do so on MacOS.

Thanks

Best Answer

Under Unix, the user has to start the malware. The malware cannot start by itself when you open the USB stick.

Above all, only those programs start that can also be executed, so something like ".jpg" .mp4 "" .txt "falls out.

You should stay away from external software that says it is scanning the USB stick, because most software itself can contain malware and it also sees the contents of the removable media and can intrude on your privacy

In addition, a virus scanner is technically not feasible. See (Theoretical Computer Science)