The Dangers of a USB Drop Attack – How to Protect Yourself?

What Is a USB Drop Attack?

A Universal Serial Bus (USB) drive is often used to store some important data facilitating communications between devices while attackers can seize the chances to get malicious software or code installed in the USB drive. That’s what we called a USB drop attack.

People can’t identify if their USB drives have been infected until they connect the device to their computers or laptops. However, once the connection succeeds, the disaster starts. The virus or malware can infiltrate your system via the connection.

So, what kind of results you may suffer because of this attack?

1. Your data can be encrypted and stolen by attackers.
2. Ransomware will be installed in your system.
3. Attackers can take over and spy on your computer remotely.
4. Your system will be vulnerable to go crash and get destroyed.

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What Are the Types of USB Drop Attacks?

There are four types of USB attacks – Social Engineering, Malicious Code, Human Interface Device Spoofing, and USBKill. We will introduce them one by one.

Social Engineering

The USB device includes files with intriguing names or links to trigger your curiosity to click it. That tricks you to share confidential information, give money, or find a way to install malware.

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Malicious Code

The affected USB device contains some files that can release malicious code, so that malware can be installed unwittingly in the victim’s system, performing a series of malicious activities.

Human Interface Device Spoofing

In a Human Interface Device (HID) spoofing attack, an affected USB drive can disguise itself as a keyboard attached to a computer, and then the computer will be misled and allow a hacker remote access.

USBKill

This type of USB drop attack is often designed to gain access and obliterate a connected device. Once you plug it into a USB port, it will destroy a PC quickly. So you’d better never use unknown USB drives on computers.

How to Protect from a USB Drop Attack?

These four types of USB drop attacks in Windows 10 can make some unrecoverable results so we need to do something to protect ourselves. Then, here are the tips.

1. Only use trusted USB drives; do not casually plug a strange USB device into your device.
2. Use reliable and powerful antivirus programs and firewalls.

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3. Ensure your data stored in a USB drive has been protected with encryption or another safety feature.
4. Disable AutoPlay. This feature allows Windows automatically perform different actions depending on the media so you can disable it to avoid USB attacks.
5. Prepare a USB drive dedicated to storing your data or system backup. If you are unfortunately attacked by the USB drop attack, this backup can help you recover them.

To do that, MiniTool ShadowMaker, free backup software, can help backup systems, files & folders, and partitions & disks. NAS backup and remote backup are also available; some other related services are better developed.

Download and install the program to protect your system.

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Bottom Line:

What is a USB drop attack? After reading this article, you may have your understanding of a USB drop attack. If you have any other questions, welcome to leave your messages.