An IT question, please? About plugging unknown USB keys without risking malware and infections.

Hello guys!

I’ll have soon finished collecting around 20 USB keys, we’re gathering photos and putting them together for an end of school year album. Problem is: I absolutely distrust the computer skills of the persons who are going to give me their thumb drives, and I’d rather not have my computer infected (my hardware is already fucked up enough, thank you.)

In that regard, would you know of solutions to*safely* access those USB keys’ data?

The simplest solution I can think of is to boot a Linux live distro, plug the keys into my PC running Linux, manually select and copy the images on the thumb drives to a local hard drive or upload them to an online host, and be done while using Linux.

But that won’t be the only time I collect USB keys, so I’d love a solution that wouldn’t make me reboot my machine.

Would you know if the infection risks remain, if I plug an USB hub to my computer, and stick the USB keys inside the hub?
Or would there be officially safe hardware solutions, something like the USB hub, but kinda made to prevent any sort of execution or infection, strictly allowing to read and nothing else?

(I also thought of asking the teachers at my kids’ school, how do they deal with the infection risk? The terrifying answer was: oh, it’s allright, I’ve got an antivirus, I plug them directly and it’s always worked. They all use Windows.)

Thanks if you’ve got an idea in that regard

Edit 1, adressing any kind of advice relying on antivirus and antimalware software solutions: there will never be a 100% detection/recognition rate, so those solutions aren’t what I’m after anyway

Edit 2: shieeeeeeeet, so there are keys that attack directly the UEFI bios? Goddamnit, linux live CDs won’t be a solution. Probably going to have to use an old machine and upload images to a cloud storage, then.

Edit 3: you know what? Raspeberry pi it is. THAT, this is safe, and for like 40€ I have a great little device that will serve again in the future.

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