Protection from boot sector virus

What is a boot sector virus? Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud. View Live Demo. How do computers get infected with a boot sector virus? How to prevent boot sector virus infection? Symptoms of a boot sector virus infection In many cases, a user may not know they are infected with a boot sector virus until they run an antivirus solution or malware scan. Protection management that is built for MSPs to enable thorough post-incident investigations and proper remediation, while keeping costs down by collecting digital evidence and storing it in a secure central repository.

Resources Renewals Contact us Site map. Legal info Privacy Policy. Boot sector computer viruses are most commonly spread using physical media. An infected floppy disk or USB drive connected to a computer will transfer when the drive's VBR is read, then modify or replace the existing boot code.

The next time a user tries to boot their desktop, the virus will be loaded and run immediately as part of the master boot record. It's also possible for email attachments to contain boot virus code. If opened, these attachments infect the host computer and may contain instructions to send out further batches of email to a user's contact list.

Improvements in BIOS architecture have reduced the spread of boot viruses by including an option to prevent any modification to the first sector of a computer's hard drive.

Removing a boot sector virus can be difficult because it may encrypt the boot sector. In many cases, users may not even be aware they have been infected with a virus until they run an antivirus protection program or malware scan.

As a result, it is critical for users to rely on continually updated virus protection programs that have a large registry of boot viruses and the data needed to safely remove them. A floppy disk does not need to be bootable to transmit a boot sector virus. Any disk can cause infection if it is in the drive when the computer boots up or shuts down. The virus can also be spread across networks from file downloads and from email file attachments. In most cases, all write-enabled floppies used on an infected PC will themselves pick up the boot sector virus.

In the past, setting the computer to boot first from the C: hard drive and then the A: floppy drive, or never to boot from the A: drive at all, was a reasonable precaution against boot sector viruses.

This is no longer the case, as viruses are now more dangerous and spread in more ways. You can configure some CMOS setups to prevent writing to the boot sector of the hard drive. This may be of some use against boot sector viruses.

However, if you need to reinstall or upgrade the operating system, you will have to change the setting back to make the MBR writable again. Prevention is usually a matter of vigilance and avoiding contact with unknown disks. The following suggestions will help keep your systems and data safe:. Check the software help for instructions.