This blogpost contains summaries of talks from this year’s TROOPERS18 Attack & Research Track.
Reverse Engineering Blackbox Systems with GreatFET & Facedancer by Kate Temkin and Dominic Spill
USB is everywhere, your phone, gaming consoles, IoT waffle irons, you name it. Due to its’ widespread use in everyday life it is typically trusted by the user. And even if one wanted to find out what’s happening behind the scenes, surely digging into USB communication is too much of a chore to be worth the hassle, right? This talk by Kate Temkin and Dominic Spill are about to prove that very wrong with an impressive display of their tools GreatFET and Facedancer.
Ever got a backdoor installed on your computer by your beloved mouse? Here’s the story of a poor mouse that got really, really sick.
Agent “Danger Mouse”
Do you remember the times where people put Teensy-boards and USB hubs in their mouses? [Chris? ;)] Their aim was to attach an additional Human Interface Device (HID, like keyboards or mouses) with some payload in kind of e.g. keystrokes or mouse movements. Also, there are devices available like the USB Rubber Ducky in the housing of a USB thumb drive.
The principle is easy: The tools are using a programmable microcontroller with the capability to emulate USB HID. That’s it. Just program your board of choice with the payload fitting your needs and plug it in at the target computer. The latter will recognize it as a keyboard/mouse and the payload-keystrokes will be entered.
But why should external hardware be used? Many modern gaming peripherals provide functions to store macros on them, including enough onboard memory for little payloads.
