USB devices offer hackers direct route to computers

USB devices such as mice, keyboards and thumb-drives can be used to hack into personal computers in a potential new class of attacks that evade all known security protections, a top computer researcher revealed. Karsten Nohl, chief scientist with Berlin's SR Labs, noted that hackers could load malicious software onto tiny, low-cost computer chips that control functions of USB devices but which have no built-in shields against tampering with their code. "You cannot tell where the virus came from. It is almost like a magic trick," said Nohl, whose research firm is known for uncovering major flaws in mobile phone technology. The finding shows that bugs in software used to run tiny electronics components that are invisible to the average computer user can be extremely dangerous when hackers figure out how to exploit them. Security researchers have increasingly turned their attention to uncovering such flaws. Nohl said his firm has performed attacks by


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