Once before, I’ve encountered a virus that transfers the entire contents of the usb removable disk to a folder with a blank filename, and then creates a self-running link in the root directory that copies the virus to the hard disk, so that it propogates itself to any new removable disk that is connected. But this was a new breed that made the removable usb drive read-only, so much so that most except the most hard core linux utilities would fail to fix it. A friend had handed the disk over to me, requesting me to see if my “linux PC can fix it”.
The command which fixed the write protect status was:
sudo blockdev --setrw /dev/sdc1
This allowed me to remount it as read-write:
sudo mount -o rw,remount /dev/sdc1 /home/joel/usb
so that I could finally run clamscan and fix it:
clamscan --remove /home/joel/usb
To rename the folder with a blank space as name, I simply used:
mv '/home/joel/usb/ ' /home/joel/usb/ab
Joel G Mathew, known in tech circles by the pseudonym Droidzone, is an opensource and programming enthusiast.
He is a full stack developer, whose favorite languages are currently Python and Vue.js. He is also fluent in Javascript, Flutter/Dart, Perl, PHP, SQL, C and bash shell scripting. He loves Linux, and can often be found tinkering with linux kernel code, and source code for GNU applications. He used to be an active developer on XDA forums, and his tinkered ROMS used to be very popular in the early 2000s.
His favorite pastime is grappling with GNU compilers, discovering newer Linux secrets, writing scripts, hacking roms, and programs (nothing illegal), reading, blogging. and testing out the latest gadgets.
When away from the tech world, Dr Joel G. Mathew is a practising ENT Surgeon, busy with surgeries and clinical practise.