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Based on my research the best USB device can do is to trick the OS believing its device type A while it is device type B.

However it can never auto install a custom driver or auto execute a program/command when plugged in given that auto play is turned off (which is the default for Windows 10/11)

Now comes the interesting part. I recently purchased a Razor mouse and when I plugged it in a prompt popped up asking me if I want to install their gaming software. The question is how did they do it?

I took a deeper look and the exe is located in C:\Windows\Installer\Razer\Installer\App

Is my previous understanding of USB wrong that it actually has the power to copy files onto disk and execute them by just plugging the device in?

And no I have never installed any Razor software before.

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  • My logitech (sorry, LOGI) mouse has some crapware that gets pulled down from Windows Update and spams notifications whenever I plug it into a computer. Have you checked to see if it's just instantly adding that, or if it's Windows Update that's installing it?
    – user
    Nov 29, 2021 at 20:52
  • @user I checked the create/modification date and its the same moment when i plugged it in.
    – Steve
    Nov 29, 2021 at 20:57
  • If you have a clean computer/test device you can try looking at Microsoft's documentation to see if that stops it. If it does, then it's most likely using Windows update to download when it gets plugged in, or it's just extracting the driver from somewhere in the system. I guess you could also try using USBPcap (might be included in recent Wireshark installs) to see if the USB device is sending odd data to the computer as well.
    – user
    Nov 29, 2021 at 21:04
  • There's an older answer here, but I do not believe Windows has changed the way it handles unknown USB devices since then.
    – user
    Nov 29, 2021 at 21:08
  • According to this link, it's also an easy way to escalate privileges on any Windows10+ machine: securityboulevard.com/2021/08/…
    – pcalkins
    Nov 29, 2021 at 23:24

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