Rubber Duckys Don't Work

[PAtech]

Our school IT department bought six Rubber Ducky USBs last year and none of them work--they do nothing.  If you plug in a fresh one, it'll run a Hello World (inject.bin) script, right?  Well, ours don't do anything, just a red light.  Yes, I've read the FAQs and read the one about a solid red light.  We've gone back and forth with Hak5 tech support, they sent us a brand new one and that one does nothing as well.  Was there a bad batch of them?  I can't believe we're the only ones that have had this issue.  We're using the supplied SD cards that came in the kits (envelopes).

So far we've used Ubuntu Linux, Mac OS 10.14, Windows 10 and Chrome OS machines to generate the scripts from ducktoolkit.com/encoder and we just get a solid red light on all six of the units.  We get the solid red light whether or not the SD card is installed.  I have got the red light to go away once, but the script on the SD card did not run.  Yes, we've reformatted the SD cards in each of the mentioned machines to FAT.

 

Here's one of the test scripts we tried:

REM Happy Holidays By Ghostshell
GUI r
DELAY 200
STRING notepad.exe
ENTER
DELAY 300
STRING          _
ENTER
STRING       |\ 0 /|
ENTER
STRING        |/|\|
ENTER
STRING          |
ENTER
STRING          @
ENTER
STRING         /+\
ENTER
STRING        o/@\\
ENTER
STRING      +//o/\\o
ENTER
STRING      //+/@\\/+o
ENTER
STRING     /\/o//+/\\\\
ENTER
STRING    +///\//\o\o+\\o
ENTER
STRING   o/+@/++/\\\@\\/\+
ENTER
STRING  /\/+///o/@\o+/\+\\
ENTER
STRING o/+/\/@//||\/\\o\\\o _
ENTER
STRING  /__ /|  ||      /__ /|
ENTER
STRING | * | | (__)___ | * | |
ENTER
STRING |___|/_   /__ /||___|/
ENTER
STRING     /_/| | * | |
ENTER
STRING    |_|/  |___|/
ENTER
STRING      `-.____/
ENTER
ENTER
STRING It was the
ENTER
STRING Night
ENTER
STRING before
ENTER
STRING Christmas...
ENTER
STRING And All Through
ENTER
STRING The House....
ENTER
STRING Not A Creature Was
ENTER
STRING Sturring...
ENTER
STRING Not Even
ENTER
STRING A Mouse
ENTER
ENTER
STRING Happy Holidays To All!!
ENTER
ENTER
STRING From 
ENTER
ENTER
STRING Cheers!!
ENTER
DELAY 100
ALT SPACE
STRING x

 

[chrizree]

Sad fact even though it sounds extremely strange that all would fail (although I see what you are writing and you seem to have tested a lot of things to resolve it). Have you tried any other encoder than the ducktoolkit one? I only use the JS based encoder that is available from the Hak5 download site and it always works.

[PAtech]

I tried it with the JS encoder on my Mac follwing the instructions here and no luck. Pretty sad that none of us can get these things to work.

[PAtech]

Thanks for the reply.  They are the 128MB MicroSD cards that came with the units.

 

[PAtech]

Of all six Rubber Ducky kits that we have, none of the SD cards work--so that's six different ones. They are all the same brand and size. Other than those, we haven't tried any other SD cards. Why would they ship an incompatible SD card with the Rubber Duckys? It's odd to me that none of these things work, they all do the solid red light with or without an SD card inserted.  I've also tested other FAT formats on the SD cards, formatting the cards in a Win 10, Mac OS X, Chromebook and Ubuntu Linux box, but formatting them other than FAT32 doesn't seem to matter either.

[Foxtrot]

Hi PAtech,

I'm sorry that none of your SD cards aren't working, that does indeed seem strange. Just to verify that it isn't the SD cards themselves, is it possible for you to test with another card? Red LED is indicative of either a non functioning SD card, or an invalid inject.bin.

You can find a known working test inject.bin at http://darren.kitchen/ducktest/inject.bin.

[Getmo632]

This is my first time to buy something from Hak5 and probably my last! Im having the same issue and Ive been beating my head against the wall reading everything I can find on the internet and can't get GUI SPACE to open the finder on my Mac. Ive used the web encoder as well as the js encoder and Ive loading scripts my own sd cards to no avail. When I plug the rubber ducky in I get a solid red light and it doesn't do jack shit. I was thinking of purchasing the wifi pineapple but after this experience I think Ill pass

 

[dark_pyrro]

Well, if you don't want to buy stuff, can't do anything about that.

What happens if you plug the Ducky into a computer without an SD card. What color is the LED? Does it light up at all?

[Getmo632]

Solid Red with or without the sd card. Ive tried everything in the Hak5 suggested articles from making sure that I'm using the FAT file system and that the inject.bin file is in the root folder of my SD card to using the test inject.bin file from the sight to trying all steps with multiple SD cards and what you suggested. Nothing but a solid red light 

[Irukandji]

How are the big are the sd cards are? If they are over 2gb. They have to be formated to FAT32 or VFAT.

I have received my rubber ducky in the mail yesterday happily Flashing green in victim (My main pc) with a 8gb sd card formatted to FAT32.

[Getmo632]

solid red

 

[dark_pyrro]

Solid red LED without any SD card inserted = firmware/Ducky OK

Solid red LED with SD card inserted = something's wrong with the SD card

Try formatting the SD card using the official formatting tool from the SD Association or use (for example) gparted if using some Linux based distro. Make sure that there is one (1) partition only on the SD card.

[Irukandji]

The Sd Card formatter is here.

Note: This is going Nuke You're Sd card so better Backup what ever you have on the card.

https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter/

And this is Only for Windows and Mac users.

[DrDuck]

@dark_pyrro I have a RubberDucky that when inserted *without* any SD card, there is no solid nor blinking red LED. Also, when I plugged it into a Windows 10 PC, it is not recognize as HID/keyboard device. Instead is enumerated as 'unknown/other device' and get this message: 'AT32UC3B DFU Driver is unavailable' -- Do I have to install a special driver for the ducky? I am in the process of reflashing the firmware with duck_v2.1.hex (is this the correct firmware?) to see if my issue is resolved. Hopefully the ducky is not death 😞

[dark_pyrro]

If there's no LED with no SD card inserted, then there's something wrong with the firmware. A re-flash might help. Files are scattered around, but the ones starting with "duck" should be referring to the stock firmware variant.

https://github.com/hak5darren/USB-Rubber-Ducky/tree/master/ducky-flasher/Firmware

https://github.com/hak5darren/USB-Rubber-Ducky/tree/master/Firmware/Images

https://github.com/hak5darren/USB-Rubber-Ducky

[DrDuck]

reflashing the firmware with duck_v2.1.hex did the trick. Thank you