Flash Detect continuously monitors for new disks/usbs or CD that are placed into the computer. It will process the contents of these against a predeterminded list of bad files and if it finds them it will continue to dish out some punishment to that user. It sits happily in the background running as either a system service or as a usermode interactive application.
The flash detect main screen.
So what kind of drives can I monitor?
Any drive really that windows can understand. But to summarise:
A) Floppy Disks, USB’s, ZIP’s, LS120s, and other Removable Disks
B) Harddisks, USB Harddisks and other Disks considered fixed
C) CD-ROMS, DVD-ROMS, and Other Optical Drives
D) Network Drives/Remote Drives
You can choose in the setup what drives you would like to monitor or ignore.
So what kind of punishment does this dish out?
There are 6 options, each a little worse than the previous. Finally! an Application worth the administrators time to configure! Anyhow here is a table summarising:
| Action |
Elaboration |
User Annoyance |
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Just Record in Log
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Often for the system administrator who is new to the job and doesn’t want to tread on too many toes. This will just log what this naughty user is up to. That is if logging is even enabled.
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They probably won’t even notice. Which is good, because you can collect all sorts of data to take to the Principal later and bust them big time.
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Display a vibrant but intimidating message on the screen.
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A very flashy and audible screen will take over their desktop, and they won’t be able to do any work until they remove those suspicious files. Just to add to the embarrassment, the message stays up on the screen for a certain amount of time (defined by you) after they remove the files.
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Shocked if anything, they probably get laughed at by other students and attract the kind of attention that would make the classroom teacher suspect something is up.
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Silently Prevent Access to the files
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So if you are the kind of administrator who likes to pull the legs of spiders, you will probably like this option. With them knowing it will lock all the files so they cannot be opened from the disk. Oh and they can’t be erased either by the user.
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Just sit back and laugh as those students try to play their flash games and instead get a big stinking error or even better a blank browser window. At this stage you are definitely starting to annoy the end user.
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Silently Delete the files
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This is so badass!! To quote the language from the Y generation. So! They don’t even know it, but when they put their disk in the drive, Bang! Their bad files are gone!
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This one will give you the administrator probably the most satisfaction. But beware, those students may be so annoyed they will actually talk to their parents, and prod them to complain. So scrub up on your knowledge of the Computer Acceptable Use policy, you may need to fallback to it.
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Alert User, offer grace period to remove files/device, delete files
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Okay this is hard to summarise in a small dialogue box. But, it basically has the same outcome as the silently ‘delete the files’ option except it gives the student to be nice and redeem themselves. A screen similar to the intimidating option appears, with a countdown timer. If they don’t comply in the time shown. Bang! Then their files are gone.
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Sort of a mixture of shock, intimidation and annoyance. You’d basically hope they’d be totally confused and in the time it takes for them to drum up the courage to ask a teacher what to do, its two late.
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Force Logoff User
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Zero Tolerance here. This is sending the clear message of get out of the lab if you ain’t working. No grace, no message, just sheer logoff.
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Mainly Confusion here, step back and laugh at how many times a student will repeat the process before they realise it might have something to do with the files on their disk.
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The Intimidating Screen
These bad file lists how do they work?
Well, if you know what *.SWF means and/or maybe *thisfile* then you’re 100% there to understanding it.
Okay so every file has an extension and this program allow your to keep a list of them. For example Shockwave Flash Games (most likely thing you want to block) have files with the extension *.SWF. So you add that to the list, then all files that have the SWF will be detected. Now for some reason you may only want the Shockwave games that start with N to be detected, well you could stipulate N*.SWF in the bad files list and wallah!
FlashDetect will detect these files even if they do not have the correct extension.
FlashDetect can even prevent access to files embedded inside other programs like Microsoft Office Excel and Word.
So what are the system Requirements?
Well any computer than runs Windows 2000/XP and maybe Vista (I haven’t tested vista). Oh and I haven’t tested in 64-bit windows.
You will need some harddisk space: 20MB
And it does use some memory: Anywhere from 4MB to 80MB depending on how many bad files it finds.
Download:
To download FlashDetect you first must be logged on:
 Flash Detect download area
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