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It's easy to make a USB device to randomly type dangerous things, open URLs and download, then start applications (anything you could do with a keystroke). That sort of thing is achievable with an Atmel chip wired to a USB plug. See http://macetech.com/blog/?q=node/46

I don't know whether it's possible for such a device to snoop on other devices. I suspect not, unless it is a hub which contains the bad firmware. It might be interesting for capturing passwords, then playing them back later.

Of course any device could compromise the device driver using buffer overflows, etc, to gain control of some aspect of the computer.



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