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Comment by _bxg1 | Hacker News Reader

As has been pointed out, you couldn't block this kind of thing without blocking USB keyboards altogether.

I wonder what it would look like to have a background program that would detect and intercept any newly connected device by default, give it a fake (VM?) environment, and log everything it tried to do to the screen while prompting to ask if you want to let it into the "real" system. Obviously this is what security professionals do manually, but I'm talking about a totally transparent and automatic version that could be left running all the time.

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On my Macs, when I try to connect a new Bluetooth keyboard, the system pops up a dialogue asking me to type a randomly-generated passcode before it'll accept any further data from the keyboard.

But it just completely trusts any USB device I plug into it to do whatever. I wonder how much work it would be to have it ask for the user to type a randomly-generated passcode before accepting input from a new USB device?

A simple system like android fine grained permissions? <usb device> is asking to send keyboard input. Allow/Deny?

This strikes me as the right solution, with two caveats:

• It should allow the keyboard through—or have a timeout that defaults to "yes"—if a mouse or keyboard is not already connected.

• I should have the option to disable it.

If there's a monitor, you don't need to trust the first keyboard—just display a message with "type this [random] code to allow this keyboard."

I like this, but how do you know the keyboard layout?

My thought was that it would be an excellent, low knowledge way of figuring that out. For example, if it said type "qwerty" and it came through as "azerty", that would get you 95% of the way to having a fully functional keyboard. Mapping out the requisite keys needed to fully identify the keys could probably be done with a fairly short number of key presses for 99+% of likely keyboards.

For this case, I am assuming that the keyboard and os language are fairly compatible, at least translatable.

desktops and servers could have special "root ports" physically colored red and hidden at the back of the case that don't require permissions.

PS/2!

I once worked at a place where the keyboard and mouse were chained to the tower and glued in place, and the spare USB ports were glued over.

What happens when you spill coffee on your keyboard?

Help Desk comes by with a new keyboard, a hair drier, and a glue gun, probably.

You call someone in the IT department to replace the keyboard.

Generally though, places that I've worked at with the same restrictions, also don't let you have liquids at the desk with said stations.

I've been in plenty of machine rooms where liquids == fired/escorted from the building.

I made a script which runs on user logon in my Windows domain and watches for any USB storage device.

It doesn't stop the attack, but in my small(ish) network I can easily recognize unauthorized devices. https://github.com/zelon88/Workstation_USB_Monitor

I used to do the other way around, and disable all my ports until I knew I needed to use one.

Of course, there's always the possibility that I unlock my port and plug in some infected USB of my own volition and it's much more likely than some random person plugging something in.

But, anyway, this thing presents as a keyboard, not a storage device.

I thought about disabling ports, and on some machines I do, but for the most part there would be mutiny if people couldn't charge their phones or use USB sticks for legitimate purposes. I try instead to make sure everyone is skeptical and weary of everything technology related+the corporate network.

I'm in the process of creating a USB drop-test script for employee training purposes. Awareness and preparedness training has been one of my best investments of time and energy with a staggering ROI. My team recently passed my last phishing test 100%.

For phone and device charging, go purchase a bunch of reputable 2 - 4 port chargers and cables and set a policy that phones at other devices should never be plugged into computers. If you want to really dissuade people, add to the policy that the full contents of any phone plugged into a company computer may be silently downloaded and examined by IT.

If the corporate network you're talking about is Windows Active Directory based then I believe that there are Group Policy settings to only allow connection of encrypted external drives. I'm not sure when this was introduced, and it might only be on Windows 10, but hopefully at this point most businesses are either already there or moving in that direction.

The problem is a lot of manufacturing equipment is either not networked, or not networkable. A lot of equipment relies on USB interfaces to load/store programs. Disabling USB ports across the board is not practical.

And with some of the crazy hardware[1] out there for retrofitting antique equipment with modern functionality; blanket encryption is not always possible either. The cited USB emulator requires that the USB stick be formatted into hundreds of minuscule FAT partitions, simulating floppy disks images and all the documentation comes in one language: Engrish. After that the machines will only load programs that follow a certain naming convention/format/ect... [1]http://www.gotekemulator.com/

So the choices for many organizations are; a) upgrade dozens of custom pieces manufacturing equipment so that they're securely networkable at astronomical cost (if it's even possible). b) Air-gap all the old scary stuff running on ancient OSs & proprietary PLC drivers from god-knows-where and only talk to them via USB/direct interfaces and worry about them when they break.

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