USB Protection

Question

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Is there a way of disabling the USB ports?
(Yes, I know, open box, cut wires!)

I meant either through the OS or programmatically.

I am required to put a machine in an unsecured location, and want to protect it from nasty little people with grubby protruberances from sticking anything on there.

(There will be no Optical drive either, this machine will have a single function that I want protected).

Any ideas or help?

Posted 11-May-10 5:12am

Dalek Dave

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Michel Godfroid 11-May-10 11:33am

It depends :-)
Do you want to disable all USB stuff, or just mass storage devices?
Which Operating System will be running on the kit?

3 solutions

Solution 3

If I were you, I'd look to create a local security policy and put it in place. This policy could limit access to only certain parts of the hard drive, and disable input from any other sources. For things like this, a security policy is a better bet.

If you don't want to go that route, you can follow the instructions here[^].

Posted 11-May-10 10:49am

Pete O'Hanlon

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William Winner · Accepted Answer · 2010-05-11T05:18:00

Solution 1

You can disable them from the BIOS normally.

You can also do it through DevCon: The DevCon command-line utility functions as an alternative to Device Manager[^]

Posted 11-May-10 5:18am

William Winner

Updated 11-May-10 5:22am

v2

Comments

Dalek Dave 11-May-10 11:27am

Thanks, I knew it was possible, just couldn't see where to go to solve it.

*dan!sh* · Accepted Answer · 2010-05-11T05:25:00

Solution 2

1. You can do that through BIOS. Can be altered quite easily though.

2. You can also change some registry entries to achieve this. Here[^] is a helpful link. Although, the users should not have access to registry or else they can enable it again.

Posted 11-May-10 5:25am

dan!sh

Comments

Dalek Dave 11-May-10 11:26am

The people who will be using it will not be able to do this! :)