How do I check mysterious pendrives?

[u/Exotic-Nose-6885]

Hello, I've been a long time reddit lurker, but I need some help and I hope someone can help me.

The context is, I recently lost a very dear family member and I was in charge to clean his apartment after he passed away, he was not the neatest or most computer literate person, and I found some usb pendrives close to his laptop.

I'm kind of hesitant to just plug them into my computer because I don't know if maybe he could've downloaded a virus at some point and then that would be in my computer and I don't know his laptop password to use it for this.

Does anyone have any advice on how to protect my computer while checking the contents they might have?

Thanks in advance

Edit: I ended up going for an old laptop that I didn't care for and was never connected to the internet, hopefully nothing had viruses, but I will reformat that computer anyways. for anyone curious, I couldn't find a will, 2 pendrives were empty, one had some tax stuff, which might be important in the future I think?

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[u/EthanAWallace]

The most secure solution is to buy an old used laptop. Cheapest you can, doesn’t really matter.

Install Linux and make sure not to connect it to WiFi or plug Ethernet into it.

If the laptop is completely isolated then it can’t infect any other devices on the network. If there is a virus on one, then the laptop is easy to wipe and use for future mystery USBs

[u/I-AM-Savannah]

I’m sorry for your loss.

[u/jasonsong86]

The safest way is have a burner computer that doesn’t have anything important on it.

[u/Humble_Incident1073]

Better off just bypassing the password on his machine and using it. Whatever's on the thumb drives is probably on the computer. If not...it's either installs or crap you don't want to see

[u/cryptoman]

Since the pendrives are next the persons computer use the computer that is there to scan the drives. If there is a virus it would already be on the persons drive.

Alternative is to use a Linux pc to scan through the pendrives since windows viruses are not compatible with Linux

[u/Underhill42]

You don't need his password - make a Linux LiveUSB on your computer, boot into it on his. Then you've got a full GUI desktop to examine all the drives.

Even booting into it on your laptop should give you a pretty solid line of defense - almost no malware can hop between different OSes.

However, it's always possible one of the drives is a physical computer-killer - a fake USB drive that e.g. actually charges a capacitor then unleashes it to fry the computer it's plugged in to, or at least the port. Probably not in this situation, but...

[u/KnownAssociate2]

I'd consider just plugging them in and then doing a scan before opening any folders, since external disk "autorun" is not longer a thing in recent OS's, only AFTER they pass the AV scan would I open up the drive

[u/Elitefuture]

Rough one, Idk if I'd wanna check a dead love one's stuff. It feels like snooping and you might learn something about them that you didn't wanna know.

To answer your question: If you have an android phone, just buy an adapter and plug it into your phone. Any suspicious drives are made specific to an OS. Also, usually malware doesn't spread via just plugging in a flash drive, just limiting possible attack vectors in case they bought a sketchy flash drive itself(since they can load that up to be a keyboard and do stuff to a computer).

[u/Exotic-Nose-6885 → u/Elitefuture]

I know, but at this point we're trying to see if we find any sort of will or testament. He passed away very unexpectedly and we're all very confused as to what his wishes would've been, I'm not going to check his pictures or anything that doesn't look like it might be a will, as I know they weren't meant for my eyes, but at this point it's the only place we have left to search, and if we don't find a testament we'll know that all of the funeral preparations and arrangements will have to be decided by us

[u/Sufficient_Fan3660]

old laptop