A new and possibly ruinous digital security exploit on USBs has been recently made public. The said exploit is nearly impossible to fix and undetectable even by today's malware detectors.  

The dangerous hack has been discovered a few months back. BadUsb, a critical flaw in our USB thumb drives, was disclosed to the public. The said flaw can turn any simple USB device into the hacker's keyboard and can then be used to type different mischievous commands that can be potentially used to commit cybercrimes or just to destroy the infected computer. The exploit engages on how the USB communicates with the computer, which would render even modern anti-virus and malware detectors blind to the attack.

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The critical flaw was originally discovered by Karsten Nohl and Jakob Lell. The researchers did not want to make the known exploit public for security reasons. Recently though, Adam Caudill and Brandon Wilson managed to reverse engineer BadUsb. The pair of researchers made their findings public during the recent DerbyCon conference. They have released their code to the internet via GitHub.

With the release of the dangerous exploit's code to the public, many are concerned that malicious hackers will now start using the code for hijacking and attacking computers.

However, Adam Caudill says that the release was just a harmless demo, and does not include anything that might help the hackers to build malicious software and viruses

"I firmly believe that by releasing this code, the risk to the average user isn't increased at all," said Caudill.

Symantec, makers of the famous Norton software security programs, gave some advice on how to avoid USB attacks. One is to only plug USB drives that you trust. Purchasing pre-owned or second-hand USB drives is also not recommended as they may contain malicious software. Lastly, Symantec recommends not leaving your computer or any digital devices unlocked and unguarded.

TagsBadUsb, USB, Malware