Control what happens to USB device

It seems like hotplug et al is getting cleverer and cleverer. But I don’t want it to be…

I have Win XP running in VirtualBox on openSUSE 21.1 and when I plug in my mobile phone it no longer appears in the ‘Devices’ menu in VirtualBox. Under 11.4 it did. I suspect the problem is that linux is capturing it and not allowing the passthrough to work (other USB devices are fine and I already have a filter set up in Virtualbox).

Dmesg now gives:

[64761.879249] usb 1-4.3: Product: N8-00
[64761.879255] usb 1-4.3: Manufacturer: Nokia
[64761.879259] usb 1-4.3: SerialNumber: 356237042436129
[64764.100096] cdc_acm 1-4.3:1.1: ttyACM0: USB ACM device
[64764.101656] cdc_acm 1-4.3:1.3: ttyACM1: USB ACM device
[64764.102198] usbcore: registered new interface driver cdc_acm
[64764.102202] cdc_acm: USB Abstract Control Model driver for USB modems and ISDN adapters
[64764.182022] usbcore: registered new interface driver cdc_ether
[64764.274508] NET: Registered protocol family 35
[64764.300292] usbcore: registered new interface driver rndis_host
[64764.302425] usbcore: registered new interface driver cdc_phonet
[64764.756065] cfg80211: Calling CRDA to update world regulatory domain
[64764.816499] usbcore: registered new interface driver rndis_wlan
[64765.014101] cfg80211: World regulatory domain updated:
[64765.014104] cfg80211:     (start_freq - end_freq @ bandwidth), (max_antenna_gain, max_eirp)
[64765.014107] cfg80211:     (2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
[64765.014109] cfg80211:     (2457000 KHz - 2482000 KHz @ 20000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
[64765.014111] cfg80211:     (2474000 KHz - 2494000 KHz @ 20000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
[64765.014113] cfg80211:     (5170000 KHz - 5250000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
[64765.014115] cfg80211:     (5735000 KHz - 5835000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)

So presumably the various drivers are not letting Vbox access the phone. I don’t know much about hutplug and usb, but I see two potential reasons, one that Virtualbox simply no longer has access rights to the devices (owner is changed) or two, that drivers prevent VirtualBox from accessing the devices.

Can I stop linux usb from doing this? Is there a simple rule I can write with the device ID to prevent drivers grabbing a device?

For the record this is a permissions problem of some sort. In /etc/udev/rules.d there is a file for virtualbox. Looks like the defaults may have changed, but in a fresh 12.1 install this has the usb permissions limited, if you uncomment the two lines as directed then restart you can access the devices. Note that with my phone it appeared, but was greyed out, unplugging it then plugging it back in (after it was set up with a filter in the virtualbox usb settings) fixed it.