Should We Bow to USBSamurai?

Devata Rohan

August 9, 2021

Recently penetration testers working on vulnerabilities faced by industrial level environments on USB implants got a new tool added to their hacking backpack. USBsamurai, an HID(human interface device), has been introduced to the world in a Black Hat Arsenal held on 5th August 2021 by Luca Bongiorni, a security researcher. It barely costs $15 to make. Irrespective of its outer appearance as a cable, it can be remotely controlled, making it possible to attack air-gapped networks. It also consists of a unifying dongle and transceiver, which can easily weaponize other USB devices such as mouses by an internal hardware implant. Being open-source and low-cost makes it not only open to pentesters and red-teamers but also anyone who has basic IT knowledge. Further exploitation of USBsamurai allows users to quickly inject keystrokes within a target through a covert wireless channel. USBsamurai uses an exclusive wireless protocol that makes it undetected by any WiFi intrusion detection system. This is the only thing that makes it more advanced than an OMG cable, but USBsamurai is not a competitor of OMG cable in any other aspect. But it is a source version of HID injecting implants for users who want to explore its applications in the offensive IoT world. Such hardware implants are probably the reason for the 2010 Stuxnet attack.

Abridged fromThe Daily Swig