BOSTON, July 31 (Reuters) – 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 on Thursday.
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[Karsten] Nohl [chief scientist with Berlin’s SR Labs] said he would not be surprised if intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency have already figured out how to launch attacks using this technique.
Last year he presented research at Black Hat on breakthrough methods for remotely attacking SIM cards on mobile phones. In December, documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden demonstrated that the U.S. spy agency was using a similar technique for surveillance, which it called “Monkey Calendar.”
An NSA spokeswoman declined to comment.
http://money.msn.com/business-news/article.aspx?feed=OBR&date=20140731&id=17821156
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