USB device registration

[Liam Proven]

On Sat, 29 Jan 2022 at 22:26, rikona <rikona at sonic.net> wrote:

> Since there does not seem to be a good way to defeat this, I plan to
> destroy any USB non-keyboard devices that try to register as a keyboard.
>
> Your thoughts and ideas much appreciated.

IMHO this is not a credible threat.

One of the only switchable-identity categories of USB devices I've met
were early 3G modems: basically a cell phone with no battery, display,
speaker, mic or keypad.

They are complex devices and need a SIM installed and initialised and
a "call" to be placed before the network became available. This needs
software. So, the device initialises as a USB drive containing the
Windows drivers, you install them, then send it a special call, and it
switches to being a 3G modem and the computer can send and received
data over it.

Many of them didn't work on Linux *because* the call to switch from
drive mode to modem mode wasn't supported on Linux.

I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm saying that, like the chap a few
weeks back who was concerned that Windows malware might have rewritten
his motherboard firmware and embedded itself in there in some form
that could still re-infect the machine even if he overwrote, zeroed &
formatted its disks and installed Linux.

I'm saying that in my professional opinion, the possibility of this is
so extremely remote that its probability is close to zero. Not
impossible but just breathtakingly unlikely, and in my evaluation, not
a significant risk.

TL;DR: don't worry about it. It is not an issue.

-- 
Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
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