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A fried of mine has a notebook without a DVD writer and wants to borrow my external DVD/CD writer. Is it possible that the DVD writer gets a virus or malware etc. if my fried is using it and his notebook has a virus? The DVD writer is connected to the USB. I mean not the burned media but really the dvd writer itself.

user312744
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    Simple answer, no. – Samuel Nicholson Apr 03 '14 at 10:30
  • Thank you for the reply. DVD writer has a firmware. Can it not be corrupted by the virus? – user312744 Apr 03 '14 at 10:37
  • I do not know of any "commercial" malware that can infect a DVD burner. It could be that the virus stops access to the burner but unless the malware is specifically designed to target external DVD burners, even then it would probably need to be on the machine to interface with it. – Samuel Nicholson Apr 03 '14 at 10:40
  • @user312744 - No its not possible. – Ramhound Apr 03 '14 at 11:16
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    For those who say infection is imposiible, what your answer is based on? – Vyacheslav May 23 '15 at 00:18
  • Security services have had this capability for quite some time, but this will likely only happen if you're targeted specifically, although it's entirely possible to create malware that persists in firmware. – SleepyCal Mar 08 '16 at 22:22

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As the comment to your question said, basically no. Yes, a firmware can get malware, even BIOS can be attacked, but the chances that his computer has malware that infects your specific hardware is slim to none. Personally, I don't think you have anything to worry about.

Edit: Also, the use of optical media readers/writers has gone way down, and there aren't a whole lot of them. I know this sort of escapes the point of this question, but I doubt someone would invest time in writing malware for the firmware of something like that.

Anit Gandhi
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