USB Canary

USB Canary is a Linux and OSX tool that uses psutil to monitor USB devices either around the clock, or just while your computer is locked. It can be configured to send you an SMS via the Twilio API, notify a Slack channel with it's inbuilt Slack bot, or send a push message through Pushover.

Disclaimer: Under no circumstances should USB Canary be used for production, production-like systems or critical infrastructure.

Getting Started

There are a couple of 3rd party libraries to get USB Canary running - so Linux and OSX users should read the prerequisites for their distribution.

Prerequisites

• slackclient - A basic client for Slack.com, which can optionally connect to the Slack Real Time Messaging (RTM) API.
• twilio - A Python module for communicating with the Twilio API and generating TwiML.
• pushover - Comprehensive bindings and command line utility for the Pushover notification service
• psutil - Cross-platform lib for process and system monitoring in Python.
• gcc - GNU Compiler Collection
• Xcode - Integrated development environment for macOS
• Quartz - Wrappers for the Quartz frameworks on macOS.

Installing Prerequisites on *Nix

Ubuntu and Debian users will need to make sure they have installed a C compiler such as gcc as well as the python-dev package.

sudo apt-get install gcc python-dev python-pip
pip install psutil

Major Linux distros also provide binary distributions of psutil. However this is not recommended as *Nix generall ship older versions.

sudo apt-get install python-psutil

You will also need to install the pip apt library through apt this can be done as follows:

sudo apt install python-apt

This library provides access to almost every functionality supported by the underlying apt-pkg and apt-inst libraries. In Debian Jessie it may come with the install but just double check to make sure it's there.

Installing Prerequisites on OSX

OSX users will need to install Xcode first then:

pip install psutil==5.3.1

OSX users will also need to manually install the Quartz Python library as follows:

pip install pyobjc-framework-Quartz

Once distribution specific instractions have been followed the following packages can all be installed via pip, in some cases you may need to use pip with sudo. You can install the packages as follows:

pip install slackclient==1.0.9
pip install twilio==5.7.0
pip install python-pushover==0.3
pip install psutil==5.3.1
pip install sander-daemon==1.0.0

Installing

Before running USB Canary, you will need to configure your settings.json file, which should be located in the root directory. If it is not found here, you will encounter an IOError.

An example settings.json file:

{
  "settings": {
    "slack": {
      "api_key": "xoxb-111111111111-abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwx",
      "channel_name": "usb_canary",
      "botname": "USB Canary"
    },
    "twilio": {
      "auth_token": "l7cy56u3Nys72vPNRS8TAbaW3X1Ap4ma",
      "account_sid": "wP32p6qFNzJ25FD1IKM0YtX629eoHbrMiV",
      "twilio_number": "+61491570156",
      "mobile_number": "+61491570157"
    },
    "pushover": {
      "priority": 1,
      "user_key": "youruserkeygoeshere",
      "api_token": "yourapitokengoeshere"
    },
    "general": {
      "paranoid": true,
      "screensaver": "xscreensaver",
      "slack": false,
      "twilio": true,
      "pushover": false,
    }
  }
}

Note that paranoid, slack and twilio are boolean values and should be set to true or false. If the file is formatted incorrectly and it cannot be parsed, you will get a ValueError, you can use JSONLint if you find yourself having issues with this.

Linux

USB Canary, can 'detect' if you are running XScreenSaver or gnome-screensaver on your computer, this is done by just checking which packages are installed via the apt library, if both of them are installed though, it will leave you to determine which one you are using - if you have an unsupported screensaver, don't fret, you can still run it in paranoid mode.

Paranoid mode is also suitable for people who want to monitor if their servers have had USB's plugged into them, although I haven't tested them on Linode, Amazon Web Services, or Digital Ocean it is suitable for those with physical servers that may need this sort of monitoring.

To start the application:

# Linux users
./usb_canary.py start | stop | restart

# OSX users
sudo ./usb_canary.py start | stop | restart

Deployment

The following will outline the basic steps to deploying USB Canary to Slack and Twilio.

Twilio

To use the Twilio integration you will need to get an:

• Auth Token
• Account SID
• Twilio Mobile Number with SMS support

Slack

To use the Slack integration you will need to setup a bot user

Pushover

To use Pushover API for sending push messages to your devices, you need to create an account and application

Exit Codes

Built With

• Python 3
• slackclient - A basic client for Slack.com, which can optionally connect to the Slack Real Time Messaging (RTM) API.
• twilio - A Python module for communicating with the Twilio API and generating TwiML
• psutil - Cross-platform lib for process and system monitoring in Python.
• Quartz - Wrappers for the Quartz frameworks on macOS
• python-apt - A library that provides access to almost every functionality supported by the underlying apt-pkg and apt-inst libraries

Contributing

See the CONTRIBUTING file for details.

Versioning

We use a simple major.minor.patch versioning where

• A major version change will make changes that are incompatible with previous versions
• A minor version change will add backwards-compatible functionality or bug-fixes
• A patch version change will add backwards-compatible bug-fixes

Authors

• errbufferoverfl - Initial work - Security Tester by day, someone with too much time on their hands by night.

License

This project is licensed under the GNU GPLv3 License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Acknowledgements

• timball - for recommending sander-daemon
• cclauss - for integrating Travis CI
• helpsterTee - for adding Pushover support