USB Attacks, Viruses ,Worms & Toolz -1

Hi friends today I’ll tell something about USB Attacks, Viruses & Worms.

USB

Possible Types of Attack On USB

 Electrical Attacks

·         Electrical attacks mounted against the USb keys require physical access to the device circuit boards.

·         Primary goal is to access private data,which is supposed to be protected by legimate user’s PIN number or password without detection by the legimate user.

·         A design flaw common to the USB keys is the improper storage of password values, which can allow the extraction of all data, including private information.

·         Changing the password value which is stores in an EEPROM allows access to the device  and extraction of all data, including private information.

‘SOFTWARE  ATTACK’

·         Attacker examines the communication channels between  the device and host computer.

·         It analyzes and determine the possibility to brute –force a password which will give access to the key device.

·         By sending incorrect and known erroneous USB packets to the USB Key,USB may leak information  such as contents of  protected memory areas.

‘USB Attacks on Windows’

·         Buffer-overflow vulnerabilites in USB device allow an attacker to bypass the Windows security and gain administrative privilges of the host machine.

·         Attacker having idea about the vulnerability in a USB device driver can program  one USB device ,know as portable memory  stick, to pose as kind of device that uses the vulnerable driver.

·         Attacker then plugs the device into the host system and triggers the exploit when the host system loads the flawed driver.

·         This allows an attacker to take control of Host sytem.

---------In my next article I’ll list out some common Viruses & Worms which will affect USB----------