Covert System Intrusion Using Modified USB Devices

Within this paper I will be discussing the overreach in privilege allocation within the USB protocol and how devices like the BadUSB exploit this to perform malicious activities. This vulnerability has been present in all USB versions since the invention of the standard in January 1996 with USB 1.0 and has become infinitely more popular to exploit in the modern, digital world due to its ease of use and effectiveness. This is creating a ‘perfect storm’ where the USB standard is becoming more popular, seeing a 30% rise in usage from 2019-2021 (Honeywell Forge, 2021) along with this vulnerability not being patched. Later in this paper, I will also design and implement hardware and firmware to utilise this attack in the real-world. Finally, I will present research that some incredible individuals have accomplished to stop this vulnerability, ranging from complex mathematics and temporal keypress analysis to hardware USB filters.

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The paper will be uploaded shortly - please keep an eye on this space!