Disable USB storage under OS X or Windows

Whilst randomly browsing a few days ago I came across a document prepared by the National Security Agency (NSA) that describes how to disable USB storage on Linux, OS X, Solaris and Windows platforms.

For OS X the guide describes disabling USB and Firewire storage:

1- Log on with an administrator account.
2- Browse to ‘/System/Library/Extensions’ folder on the system disk.
3- Trash both IOUSBMassStorageClass.kext and IOFireWireSerialBusProtocolTransport.kext which are found in this directory.
4- Empty the trash.
5- Reboot the machine.

Disabling USB storage on a Windows platform is only a little more complicated:

1- From Explorers folder options ensure that hidden files and folders are displayed, file extensions are not hidden and simple file sharing is disabled.
2- Open up the properties for %systemroot%\Inf\Usbstor.inf (%systemroot% would normally be ‘C:\Windows’).
3- Select the security tab and make sure that all options for all users are set to deny. This must include administrators and SYSTEM.
4- Repeat the above for %systemroot%\Inf\Usbstor.pnf
5- If USB storage devices have been used on this machine previously then open up the registry editor otherwise ignore steps 6 and 7.
6- Browse to the registry location ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\UsbStor’.
7- Open up the registry key ‘Start’ and change the data value to ‘4r42;. Close the registry editor.

That’s it! If simple file sharing was enabled previously then don’t forget to re-enable it.