Prevent copying data to usb devices in Linux Ubuntu 16.04

There may well be better, more bullet proof ways of doing it, but playing arround on my Ubuntu 16.04 system -

Ubuntu mounts disks at /media/USERNAME/XXXXXXXX so by changing the write permissions for /media/USERNAME they will not be able to access the mount point. You can do this (as root) using chmod 700 /media/USERNAME

A better way - depending on your needs - might be to stop the usb_storage module from loading, making USB disks unrecogniseable. You can do this with a command like

 echo "blacklist usb-storage" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-usb.conf

And rebooting your system.

davidgo

Posted 2018-04-06T05:57:29.153

Reputation: 49 152

Also see https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/403798/set-removable-media-usb-drive-permissions-to-a-specific-group for a more complex and comprehensive method.

– davidgo – 2018-04-06T06:23:25.233

Thank you! But one more question..can i give chmod 755 (only read & execute ) permission by this way? – Teymur Gahramanov – 2018-04-07T21:21:47.930

Probably not - that would depend on the filesystem on the USB drive. I'm not a a PC to check, but I'm pretty sure Ubuntu mounts the drive with the permissions of person who is logged in, and more specific file perms will override the parent mount point details provided the user can read that mount point. – davidgo – 2018-04-07T23:58:47.457

– Kamil Maciorowski – 2018-04-06T06:41:19.453

USB sticks with FAT filesystems are auto-mounted with specific group and user-ids, so you have to find out which kind of auto-mounting your Ubuntu uses, and then you can modify the ids or set permissions, if the auto-mounting system allows it (Debian usbmount does, not sure about systemd-stuff). – dirkt – 2018-04-06T10:49:19.840

Prevent copying data to usb devices in Linux Ubuntu 16.04

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