Questions tagged [usb]
an industry standard used for connecting to and powering peripheral devices (keyboards, mice, cameras, printers, external hard drives, etc) from a computer or other USB capable device.
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Watching movie from a potentially infected device
I went on holiday with a friend. He filmed and made a movie from our trip. He put the movie on my usb key.
I was about to plug this, but realised my friend does not have good security practices, so ...
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Force user to remove USB token
I'm looking at setting up secure laptops using BitLocker with pre-boot PIN and startup key.
I'm wondering if there is a way to force the user, who is remote, to remove the USB with the startup key ...
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risk from USB-C port on locked laptop
If an attacker has access to the USB-C port on my laptop which is in powered on but at the lock screen, what is the risk that they are able to carry out an evil maid attack? Say I'm in the room but ...
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USB Mouse in the meeting room
In our meeting rooms we have at our disposal the necessary material for presentations. HDMI, and mouse etc., lock down to the table (3 digit lock).
All the mouse have been removed for security ...
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Persistent Bootable USB with Write Protection?
I am developing a series of extraction scripts (currently python 2.7) for a university project - these tools will be provided on a bootable USB for use by first responders when encountering a suspect ...
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What considerations are there for using USB WiFI adapters and how to protect against them?
Often with older machines, the built-in WiFi adapters have failed. These in turn drive a demand to procure USB WiFi adapters since ethernet connectivity is not a choice.
Since the devices will be ...
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Detecting USB-based(Arduino Leonardo) attacks
Can a USB-based atack, e.g., BadUSB, RubberyDucky be detected by observing the output from dmesg?
I bought a brand new DFRobot Beetle, which is essentialy a miniaturized Leonardo.
A few seconds after ...
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Can a USB with an infected MBR or GPT harm an OS that reads it?
Assume a USB drive has an MBR or GPT that has malware in it. I already understand that booting from such a USB device would execute the malware as part of the bootloader. If I understand correctly, if ...
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Boot from live usb to avoid being spied on
Suppose the government wants to spy on you using government-designed malware. If you then want to visit sensitive pages on the internet, would it be more secure to use Tor browser within a USB - live ...
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Malware spreading via installation media
Imagine user downloads and burns installation USB stick on their compromised Linux system. Are there any known malware that is capable of spreading via Linux distributions installation media so that ...
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How can I safely use potentially infected USB sticks from a previous OS installation?
So I recently upgraded an old MB Pro to Mojave because I was concerned I could've infected it.
Now I'm probably overreacting to all of this but since I was using all of my USB sticks in the previous ...
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Is it possible that a usb drive manufactured 3 months ago can have data copied to it that shows the file last modified date before manufacturing date? [closed]
I have some data that needs to be handed to a friend. I don't want to give the original drive (drive-1), so I plan to purchase a drive (drive-copy) and copy data to it. The data copied will still show ...
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How we can prevent innocent looking USBNinja (USBHarpoon) attacks?
Is there anything we can do across the company to make sure USBNinja and other similar USB cables that looks so real for users can really be mitigated?
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How to prevent a virus from stealing data when I transfer files between offline and online computers?
Let's say I have one offline computer with some important data, and one online computer. Sometimes I need to move files from the offline computer to the online one. When I transfer those files, is ...
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Reading SD cards on a GPO blocked USB [closed]
Our company has a GPO which blocks USB mass storage devices. The GPO permits Media Transfer Protocol (MTP) connections. Some SD card-based camera devices don't support MTP so they are blocked as they ...
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Can infection effect a phone through it's wireless hotspot, also the usb tethering
If I made a wireless hotspot from my phone and had computers infected with malware connect and use my wireless connection of the phone can any malware from the pc get into the phone?
If my phone was ...
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Which encrypted USB stick is the better option? [closed]
I am looking for a hardware encrypted USB stick to carry some important files such as my KeePassXC database, Key files, cryptocurrency wallets, certificates and other stuff with me.
There are some ...
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Is it possible to check if a USB's firmware is unmodified when plugged in?
Let's say I have some USB stick that I know and trust. I can examine the firmware and generate a checksum for it.
Can I use this checksem to ensure that when the USB is next plugged in the firmware ...
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Working from a USB [closed]
I have a Mac for my work laptop and I would like to work on my xCode project, I can't work on the laptop directly and save the file to computer due to fears that it could one day be recovered & be ...
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Is there a risk in rebooting a smartphone while it's connected to an unknown USB port?
I rebooted my phone while it was connected to the PC and saw a notification about a failed device installation. Looked up the text and the code, and it turns out my phone exposes a certain way to ...
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Is it possible to bypass USB access restriction placed by the Active Directory? [closed]
I've been tasked with an onsite engagement to see what I can find from one of their laptops. They have a policy in place to block USB access through the Active Directory, e.g. When you try to access ...
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Are PS/2 devices a risky piece of hardware for modern point of sale devices to be using?
This question is based off of a TempleOS question here on Super User. The gist is that PS/2 support seems to be disabled from many modern BIOS’es due to a possible security flaw in the protocol. ...
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If I format a USB stick, will the old contents be recoverable?
I have read that the "safest" way to make sensitive USB contents un-recoverable is to hammer to pieces the USB stick.
Indeed, a quick search on Google shows up hundreds of ways to "recover usb files" ...
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How protect ourselves from USB Firmware viruses? Does Antivirus help?
On Windows (pnd probably other operating systems, I don't know), when you plug in a USB appliance (a flash drive, mouse, etc) Windows automatically runs the "Device installation" and the firmware is ...
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How to find if a USB has been plugged in on a certain date? (Linux/Mac)
Starting from this great script offered by Daniel Azuelos
cd /Volumes/suspicious_USB
/usr/bin/sudo find . -atime -21 -exec ls -dluT {} \;
How is it possible to modify it in order to find if a USB ...
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Creating portable bash terminal & cmd to USB [closed]
Developing my toolkit and I want to have a safe edition of cmd.exe and bash on a usb. Why? These can be tampered with by attackers and I want a version I know is safe from manipulation. Any ...
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How can a user defeat anti-live forensics software?
Let's say I have a computer with full disk encryption which is logged and running, but I suspect it has anti-forensics software (eg. usbkill), which means that I risk compromising the integrity of the ...
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TLS/SSL over USB using OpenSSL [closed]
I want to secure the communication of an embedded device that is connected to a host via USB.
At the moment I'm considering using the openssl library. I can use it on the embedded device and on the ...
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Can you get a virus / malware just by plugging in a USB device? [duplicate]
I recently bought an electronic cigarette lighter which is charged via USB. I have no idea if the company that made it is trustworthy as it is one of those no-name brands.
The thing that concerns me ...
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Does using an UPS mitigate power-analysis attacks on a keyboard?
Are there any papers that can document that using an online UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) can reliably protect against power-analysis attacks that attempt to read keystrokes on wired keyboards?
...
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Security considerations for USB keyboard/mouse switches
I am considering purchasing a basic USB keyboard/mouse switching box in order to allow me to use the same keyboard and mouse with two different physical machines. This is similar to a KVM (keyboard ...
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Can smart power meters read key presses on a wired keyboard?
Smart power meters are becoming quite prevalent. Question: Can a smart power meter (with patched firmware) read the keys pressed on a wired PS/2 or USB keyboard, connected to a desktop computer? What ...
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Can a program containing virus, used to flash USB firmware infect it despite formatting?
I was having problems with my Kingston 8GB USB drive (it kept saying "write protected"). I solved the problem by first using ChipGenius and then a program called "Restore v3.13.0.0". I downloaded from ...
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Is all the alarmism around BadUSB really called for with respect to host devices?
I can understand why there was such a furor about BadUSB and indeed it poses a rather earthshaking threat to the base assumptions of many in their cyber security threat models. Things which many of us ...
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USBlyzer - Safe Or Not?
I need to use a USB analyzer. I've been looking at a couple of different options. This one came up. As far as I can tell, it's not open source, but seems to be quite popular. Seeing that the data ...
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Possible to use *only* U2F authentication?
Using a U2F USB authentication key to login to services such as Google seems a good idea. However, these services often allow you to register a backup two-factor-authentication (2FA) method, which you ...
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Is USB type c vulnerable to BadUSB?
Consider the new SanDisk ultra dual type c flash drive. Would that be safer once computers start to come with type c ports?
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Re: Intel IME\physical-access exploits - Has a Manufacturer ever (unintentionally) released malware-infected PC Components?
Given the discovery that Intel's IME can be hacked by USB (since 2008), I started researching hardware level exploits - like the Stuxnet USB attack on Iran's Nuclear plant and I'm curious about the ...
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Have the recent Linux kernel USB vulnerabilities found by Andrey Konovalov been patched?
Have the Linux USB drivers been patched for the recent vulnerabilities that have been found by Andrey Konovalov (Google)? If not what can be done to protect against these attacks other than avoiding ...
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How to protect/mitigate IntelME (CSME) JTAG attack over USB?
Two security searchers from ptsecurity.com ( Maxim Goryachy @h0t_max and Mark Ermolov @_markel___ ) have announced on Twitter:
Game over! We (I and @_markel___ ) have obtained fully functional ...
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Analyzing possible encrypted USB stick
I was given an USB stick which was used to secure some data from a work computer. However - the USB stick seems broken now, or encrypted, which would mean the information might be lost.
So, when ...
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Mouse receiver shows up as keyboard too - is this an issue?
I have recently seen some wireless mice that when the receiver is plugged in to a USB port, Windows device manager shows a new "HID-compliant mouse" (as expected) and also an "HID-compliant keyboard." ...
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Is there a USB exploit to bypass Windows password login?
I work for a small-medium company doing most of the IT tasks, including systems administration, network administration, and even developing in-house software. Recently, my boss (the CEO) told me that ...
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Security of mapping Local Resources over RDP
I work with a group of developers that do network level program. To prevent these developers from accidentally causing problems on the corporate network they have been given there own isolated ...
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Protect computer from usb device [duplicate]
I need to plug a cctv style camera via usb on my computer in order to read what it recorded.
In general, how can I protect the computer I plug a usb device into, if I am worried the USB device might ...
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Is it safe to connect a random USB battery from a bin to my phone without stopping data transfer in some way?
I've asked the question Power-only USB connection to charge my phone - as simple as cutting the data lines? in electronics SE. In order to bypass the "Why do you want to do this?" request ...
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Can I safely use a physical USB stick inside VirtualBox (isolated) without possibly infecting the host OS?
There is a program that I wish to run under VirtualBox in order to avoid possibly infecting my computer because I am not sure I should trust the source. (Based on download location).
It is for ...
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USB Killer Protection
Is there any way to protect computers from the USB vulnerabilities exploited by the likes of USB Killer and other similar attacks?
(Protection aside from a strict data protection compliance schemes ...
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How to prevent USB flash drive viruses
Can anyone tell me what is the safest way to use flash drive in a secured network( I am not looking for a way to block it). i need a safe practice to use flash drive in a windows network.
My ...
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Overwrite USB write protection switch on MP3 players [closed]
I found a bunch of old USB MP3 players that are knockoffs of the iPod Nano.
They have no logos on them. Some of them have a hold switch and on the computer it appears to offer write protection and ...
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