I have some questions about the security implications of accessing internal and external storage since I cant find any more information on it from what I've read. I have read about a variety of exploits (for example buffer overflows) and technologies designed to defend against them (DEP, ASLR, etc) but understand that no system is perfect.
What precautions can we take upon accessing external drive (manly to access media data) where we cant be sure about the safety of all datas contained?
From what I've read some good advice is to turn off autorun and have antivirus software activated. Does that mean it will then be safe to access any media file there? Or is there more to it? Would manually scanning the file before accessing it impact anything?
Secondly about internal drive; does Windows security and antivirus and other security software act differently when scanning an internal drive in comparison to an external drive?
For example, the feature to turn off autorun for an external drive - for internal drives does this mean everything could autorun unknowingly, hidden, etc?
The intention behind my question is to get input of more measures I can take to be safer. Is simply having an activated antivirus program, firewall, etc, enough or what further steps can I take to decrease my vulnerability?