EaseFilter Control Filter Driver provides you a simple way to block file access to USB drive in your application. With the EaseFilter Control Filter Driver, it is simple to control the read and write access to the USB drive.

EaseFilter file system filter driver is a kernel-mode component that runs as part of the Windows executive above the file system. The EaseFilter file system filter driver can intercept requests targeted at a file system or another file system filter driver. By intercepting the request before it reaches its intended target, the filter driver can extend or replace functionality provided by the original target of the request. The EaseFilter file system filter driver can log, observe, modify, or even prevent the I/O operations for one or more file systems or file system volumes.

Block file access to USB drive in your application

How to block the read or write to your USB drive in your application? EaseFilter SDK provides you an API to control file access to a USB drive, you can setup the volume control flag as below to block the USB read or write.

//This is the volume control flag
/// <summary>
/// Get a notification when a USB was plugged in.
/// </summary>
VOLUME_ATTACHED_NOTIFICATION = 0x00000002,
/// <summary>
/// Get a notification when a USB was unplugged.
/// </summary>
VOLUME_DETACHED_NOTIFICATION = 0x00000004,
/// <summary>
///Block the read from the USB disk.
/// </summary>
BLOCK_USB_READ = 0x00000010,
/// <summary>
///Block the write to the USB disk
/// </summary>
BLOCK_USB_WRITE = 0x00000020,

//Here is an example to block the USB read and write with below settings:
uint volumeControlFlag = (uint)(BLOCK_USB_READ | BLOCK_USB_WRITE) 
boolean retVal = FilterAPI.SetVolumeControlFlag(volumeControlFlag);

How to prevent your files from being transferred to a USB drive?

Using USB drives to transmit data is still a very convenient way for many of us, despite how popular the cloud storage services are in the internet age. It’s easy and practical but is also hard to control how it behaves especially when you plug in one from the unknown source and that contains stuff you don’t know. You also want to prevent your sensitive files from being copied out to the USB drive without your permission. Since the security of USB is fundamentally broken, it would be nice having an easy way to better control and protect your confidential files in your computer against the USB drive.

With EaseFilter Control Filter Driver SDK you can prevent files from being transferred to a USB flash drive based on filename, extension.  You can setup a filter rule, disable the access right “ALLOW_COPY_PROTECTED_FILES_TO_USB“.

//Set up a filter rule, disable the flag 'ALLOW_COPY_PROTECTED_FILES_TO_USB' in the control flag for the filter rule as below:
uint accessFlags = ALLOW_MAX_RIGHT_ACCESS & (~ALLOW_COPY_PROTECTED_FILES_TO_USB);
FilterAPI.AddFileFilterRule(accessFlags, "c:\\myProtectFolder", false,0 );