Disable USB hub

Question

I wish to be able for security reasons to be able to disable all of my USB ports, to do this without having to do every USB port individually, I would have to disable my entire USB hub, so that really is my question, how would I go about disabling my USB hub?

I am running Ubuntu 14.10, and the command lsusb returns the following output:

Bus 002 Device 003: ID 058f:6366 Alcor Micro Corp. Multi Flash Reader
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 5986:0295 Acer, Inc 
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

If you need for me to provide any more information to my question to help you answer it then please let me know.

Answer 1

That should be possible from BIOS. Another option is to write a udev rule to unbind any USB root hub driver: ohci-pci (USB 1.1), ehci-pci (USB 2.0) and xhci_hcd (USB 3.0).

1. Create new rules file

   sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/90-disable-usb.rules
   

2. Add these rule lines

   DRIVERS=="?hci-pci", RUN+="/bin/sh -c 'echo -n %k >/sys%p/driver/unbind'"
   DRIVERS=="xhci_hcd", RUN+="/bin/sh -c 'echo -n %k >/sys%p/driver/unbind'"
   

3. Reboot

Notes:

• Example how to check which driver and other device attributes to use them in udev rule:

  udevadm info --name=/dev/bus/usb/001/001 --attribute-walk
  

  or

  lsusb -t
  

• Depending on your hardware/platform. There are many USB host drivers. Check Linux source

Answer 2

If you want to disable the entire USB hub so that no mice, keyboards, USB sticks whatever can be used, just do a:

lsmod | grep usb

and blacklist all modules that contain usb in the first column.

I'm sorry? Mice and stuff still need to work? Oh! Only blacklist usb_storage then!

;-)