this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2024
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I mean therein lies the problem. If you remove mass storage devices but allow cds then that’s just a different attack vector to exploit. You could potentially make it so there is no way to interface with any kind of storage but then when someone finds a way to break things open with a hid device you now have no practical way to fix the issue (plus working with the machine will be a nightmare)
CDs have an advantage over USB drives in that they can't actually secretly be USB HID devices like a fake keyboard or mouse that runs a bunch of commands when it plugs in. It's only a storage device.
A super secure environment might then lock down all USB devices to ones known by them and then epoxy all ports and devices.
No. This exploit worked because the medium is read-write. Once a disc is finalized, it cannot be written to. You can't exfiltrate data via the CD.
I'm sure there's some modified CD burner out there that can write to a finalized disc, but this would only work where the air-gapped machine supports it, and also even has a drive that can write.
Unless it’s a rewritable cd, or the cd is the first step in a chain of exploits that allows write access on the usb ports used for peripherals so that an inside person could get away with a usb key or modified keyboard, or something else we can’t conceptualize but some group of well funded state actors can