3 ms·

This is likely not enough to secure a system against a sufficiently skilled adversary. An OS has limited control over many of the side-channels available to the

This is likely not enough to secure a system against a sufficiently skilled adversary. An OS has limited control over many of the side-channels available to the USB stick once it is inserted into the system (e.g., fluctuations in the voltage rails that give away what the processor is doing). If you are thinking in terms of "if it identifies itself as...," then there is a good chance that something lower in the stack may be compromised. This gets even more troublesome once we consider that people sometimes forget that seemingly "dumb" dongles such as display adapters can be very similar to USB sticks from an implementation and vulnerability point of view (e.g., "Thunderclap"). I think the overhead of hardening systems for each of these scenarios would be immense.

robocat 8y ago
> This is likely not enough to secure a system against a sufficiently skilled adversary. That statement is not helpful, because it remains true for any security measure. The GP suggestions can make everyone's computers more secure now, at what would seem to be a low cost...
jimrandomh 8y ago
Yes, there will likely still be ways for a malicious USB device to use electrical side-channels to attack a connected computer. But devices like that will be much harder to develop. And more importantly: compromised devices which weren't originally designed to do that, won't be able to rewire themselves into side-channel-exploiters. So if my USB storage device has a firmware vulnerability, and a malicious computer reprograms it, it won't be able to use electrical side-channels to attack my other computers because it doesn't have a suitable DAC and ADC.