Malicious devices & vulnerabilties

[Xi Wang <xi.wang () gmail com>]

Hi,

In general driver code trusts hardware devices and often doesn't
validate the data they respond with.  But how about USB devices
that an attacker could plug into a victim's computer?  For example,
an attacker may craft a USB device with a long product name to cause
a buffer overflow (CVE-2011-0712).

http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2011/02/16/5
http://twitter.com/#!/mwrlabs/status/44814759396249600

Here is another possible bug in the USB audio format parser I tried
to report upstream.

https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/1/4/215

I am wondering where to draw the line.  Should such device drivers
be considered vulnerable or not?  Thanks.

- xi