> There's nothing unique about USB in this respect. Every device driver in > the kernel is potentially subject to such an attack. Do you have any > reason to think that USB might be especially vulnerable?
Just speculating here, since I don't know what Fabien was originally thinking about: in shared computing areas, you might commonly want to allow people to plug in random USB devices like flash drives. The prospect of a malicious "root kit" device that can just be plugged in to gain control of a machine could be an interesting worry in this case. If USB peripherals could have arbitrary access to host memory by misbehaving then this would be a serious worry, security-wise. This is not the case for any HC I'm aware of. Of course, this doesn't rule out attacks against vulnerabilities against specific client drivers but it's not risky in the same way as allowing users to bring along arbitrary PCI devices and plug them in ;-) Cheers, Markl ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: IntelliVIEW -- Interactive Reporting Tool for open source databases. Create drag-&-drop reports. Save time by over 75%! Publish reports on the web. Export to DOC, XLS, RTF, etc. Download a FREE copy at http://www.intelliview.com/go/osdn_nl _______________________________________________ [email protected] To unsubscribe, use the last form field at: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linux-usb-devel
