General Hacking

 Disable Writing to USB Drives

By Ankita Chaterjee

A common security concern at organizations is allowing users to plug in a usb flash drive, because they could so easily copy corporate data.SinceWindows XP SP2, you can disable writing to USB devices altogether using a simple registry hack.however one should also note that if you are using this trick, you should make sure that the users are not administrators on the computer, because they could easily change this setting back.
Here it is:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies]
"WriteProtect"=dword:00000001

Paste the code into a notepad file,and then save it as a registry file.Double click it and voila,you have successfully prevented the write access to theUSB drive.
Once you have double clicked the registry, you will have to reboot for the changes to take effect.
This works on Windows Vista as well. Here's the window you'll get when you try and write to a USB drive:

If you want to enable the write access again,then copy this code and paste the code into a notepad file,and then save it as a registry file.Double click it and write access will be enabled again.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies]
"WriteProtect"=dword:00000000'

Stay tuned for more tips and hacks.
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               (With inputs from Abir Atarthy)