I’m pretty sure USB ports can be disabled within the BIOS on most machines. That would be the thing to do within a corporate environment, in many cases. Such a thing would be a hassle on a home computer, except for a computer used by children, perhaps.
This is a VERY bad exploit. The potential severity of this can not be overstated.
Agreed. I am in IT in a medical environment, and I could see someone walking up to a high-end workstation and just putting a specially made USB drive into a port (nobody ever looks to see if one is there when they login) and just walking away.