A system and method for the prevention of malicious file copying detects a file copy operation indicative of copying a file to an electronic clipboard. If the file copy operation is detected, the computer reads file contents of the copied file, and scrambles the file contents. If a file paste operation indicative of the copied file being pasted to a designated file system path, the computer pastes the scrambled file to the designated file system path. File attributes of the scrambled file are the same as file attributes of the copied file.