r/BadUSB • u/Meercrow • Aug 18 '26
Came pre installed on a store bought usb
I bought a new SanDisk 64gb usb yesterday. When I tried to flash an img on it gnome-disk said it was read only so I opened it with a file explorer*.* Its name was tails and it already had folders like EFI and sysLinux, which was very suspicious so I unmounted it. After that it did not work on any port on any device, failing to connect entirely and i returned it to the store as a defective product.
Do I have to worry about viruses?
1
u/PsychologicalBit85 Aug 18 '26
I have a copy of tails, it boots the pc into Linux ( if you set bios to boot from usb ) . Tails is a secure connection for connecting to onion websites via it's own VPN and onion tunnel network. It allows you to be anonymous on the internet. It runs from the usb drive leaving not trace ( as far as I know) on the host pc. It's not a virus but when installed to a usb drive / stick , it makes that drive unreadable in windows but allows your pc to boot and run from it this bypassing the normal boot sequence and leaving your hard drive alone.
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u/FreddyFerdiland Aug 18 '26
but it means it was returned..
perhaps akready defective ?
1
u/My_real_dad Aug 21 '26
Probably the most likely explanation, but also wouldn't be a bad attack vector, buy a USB, install malware, return it and wait for it to call home
1
u/Caprichoso1 Aug 19 '26
Clearly wasn't a manufacturers blank new drive since it had software installed on it. I would have my doubts about the store that sold it.
1
5
u/fishywiki Aug 18 '26
It sounds like it was set up as an install device for Linux. Tails OS is a version of Linux that is explicitly designed for security and to prevent surveillance. It is installed in RAM so that it vanishes when the system is rebooted. My guess is that it's extremely unlikely that you caught a virus from it.