Re: BadUSB discussion

[Greg KH <greg () kroah com>]

On Fri, Aug 08, 2014 at 06:40:50PM +0100, Eddie Chapman wrote:
> Yes, immensely. It's clear to me now that being able to re-programme a USB
> device firmware is not quite as easy and straightforward as is being made
> out to be in certain quarters.

On the contrary, it's trivial to do on a whole bunch of USB devices as
that is how they were _designed_ to work.  So much so that there is a
whole USB spec on exactly how to do this in a way that will work across
all different operating systems:
        http://www.usb.org/developers/docs/devclass_docs/DFU_1.1.pdf
I don't remember when the 1.0 version of this spec was published, I
think around 1995 or so.

So I really don't see how this ability is anything "shocking" to anyone.

> That's not to say that the research being discussed hasn't thrown up
> some very interesting issues around hardware and trust.

Never trust hardware.  Until you have to.  :)

greg k-h