Windows 7: USB-Based Attack by Emulating Keyboards

Hackers Demo USB-Based Attack by Emulating Keyboards



At the Black Hat DC security conference this week, two hackers have demoed an attack that relies on tricking the computer into believing an attached USB device is actually a keyboard.

Security researchers Angelos Stavrou and Zhaohui Wang have modified the USB stack on an Android smarphone to make it register itself as a human interface device (HID) when connecting it to a computer.

The device can then emulate keystrokes in order to start a potentially malicious application or perform other malicious tasks.

With the exception of Stuxnet, which exploited a critical Windows zero-day vulnerability to launch files from USB storage devices, such attacks usually exploit the Windows AutoRun feature