Over the past few years NCC Group has identified over 50 USB driver bugs, using this research along with information from his 2011 paper “USB – Undermining Security Barriers” Andy Davis will, in this paper, outline common USB vulnerabilities and how to identify them.
The paper will firstly discuss the range of approaches to testing USB host-based drivers across different operating systems, then moving on to detail the different vulnerability classes that the author has observed in real world drivers and then identify which USB descriptors these vulnerabilities have been identified in.
The paper will conclude with the current state of USB driver security and describe security best practice approaches that organisations and individuals can adopt to mitigate the risks discovered in NCC Group’s 50 Bugs research.
