TPUTrap: Hardware-Based USB Man-in-the-Middle Attack on Coral Edge TPU
S. O. Niang, Jordane Lorandel, Christophe Moy · IEEE Embedded Systems Letters · 2026
AI-based hardware accelerators, such as the Coral USB Accelerator, enable the use of AI in embedded systems without relying on the cloud, offering advantages like low latency, reduced power consumption, and enhanced privacy. It connects to the host via USB, which lacks encryption and authentication checks, raising security concerns in critical applications. This paper demonstrates a man-in-the-middle attack on the Coral USB Accelerator's USB interface, utilizing a Raspberry Pi 5 and a USB Proxy for real-time interception and manipulation of USB traffic. This approach successfully exfiltrated sensitive data and caused misclassification. Despite an added latency overhead, all attacks achieved 100% success, underscoring the need to address this security issue.