Attestation & Authentication for USB Communications

Abstract

In this paper, we present the design, implementation, and software testing of USBSec, a secure extension of the vanilla USB protocol that incorporates host authentication to defend against software threats. Specifically, we force the USB host to supply authentication information to the peripheral device \emph{before} enumerating the device. The peripheral validates the authentication information against its own list of \emph{authorized host keys}. If both sides can validate each other, standard USB enumeration continues otherwise the connection is terminated. We have implemented a fully working prototype of USBSec based on USB implementation in Linux kernel and our experimental results demonstrate its practicality and effectiveness.