Or you can raise suspicion, get caught on surveillance camera and have a talk with a police officer. Yeah, there might be ways to avoid that, but in case of failed attempt there will be one more thing to explain.
Dead Drops: what to do if you see a USB stick sticking out of a wall
41–50 of 58 posts
Re: Dead Drops: what to do if you see a USB stick sticking out of a wall
#42If I wanted to do something like this I'd create open WiFi access points called something like "DeadDrop". They wouldn't be connected to the internet. Instead they'd forward you to a locally hosted site that let you download and upload from local storage. WiFi has a lot of advantages. You eliminate the risk of USB attacks, physical damage to the device, and the actual location is unknown. The downside is that it woul…
Radio direction finding is well known and easily performed. The location may not be immediately obvious, but a knowledgeable person could find it without much difficulty.
Re: Dead Drops: what to do if you see a USB stick sticking out of a wall
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the article it's said that's explicitly part of the idea - it's supposed to be dangerous.
It's supposed to appear dangerous. The first time anything actually dangerous happened the user would immediately stop using them. Or worse, they'll end up in prison. Copying a random zip file of the Anarchist's Cookbook on to your PC will get you a few hours of questioning by the police and a caution not to be so stupid as to be a pretend spy again; why you downloaded an archive of several thousand child porn pictur…
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Re: Dead Drops: what to do if you see a USB stick sticking out of a wall
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's supposed to appear dangerous. The first time anything actually dangerous happened the user would immediately stop using them. Or worse, they'll end up in prison. Copying a random zip file of the Anarchist's Cookbook on to your PC will get you a few hours of questioning by the police and a caution not to be so stupid as to be a pretend spy again; why you downloaded an archive of several thousand child porn pictur…
> Copying a random zip file of the Anarchist's Cookbook on to your PC will get you a few hours of questioning Not in the US. I could download a hundred copies from every sketchy warez site on the internet without violating any laws.
The same is true here in the UK. It's not a crime to have the file, but it'd be reason enough for the police to request you 'voluntarily' answer some questions about where you got it from and why. If you refuse to answer questions however, then it's a crime.
Re: Dead Drops: what to do if you see a USB stick sticking out of a wall
#45If I wanted to do something like this I'd create open WiFi access points called something like "DeadDrop". They wouldn't be connected to the internet. Instead they'd forward you to a locally hosted site that let you download and upload from local storage. WiFi has a lot of advantages. You eliminate the risk of USB attacks, physical damage to the device, and the actual location is unknown. The downside is that it woul…
Except it's a beacon that screams "Hey I'm over here" to everyone in a 90m radius.
Re: Dead Drops: what to do if you see a USB stick sticking out of a wall
#46A more surreptitious spy would have a piece of hardware that can manipulate a USB drive without needing a full laptop. Any small USB host would do, from an old MP3 player to a Sony PSP.
If we're talking about general tradecraft, in a how would you do it vein. I suspect a small internet-enabled device set to randomly transmit some time in the next few days or so, that sends OTP encrypted messages to as many people as it can, including the destination, and that self-destructs... releases acid or whatever into the chips... once it's done or if it's tampered with, would be hard to trace back the sender.
Throw it in a bin along with your morning coffee in a place thousands of people go a day - it'll get mixed in with all the other trash in a landfill somewhere and then good luck finding whose trash it went there with....
Re: Dead Drops: what to do if you see a USB stick sticking out of a wall
#47> If you spot a USB flash drive cemented into a wall or kerb, you may have stumbled across a Dead Drop, part of a global art project borrowing tricks from the world of espionage Or, you might have stumbled across 240VAC wired to a USB connector.
I wonder if that would be worse than carefully crafted malware.
Since sharing USB flash drives is pretty much the equivalent of having digital unprotected sex anyway, I'm sure you'll get that soon enough.
And it can get much, much worse than plain old viruses too:
Re: Dead Drops: what to do if you see a USB stick sticking out of a wall
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Copying a random zip file of the Anarchist's Cookbook on to your PC will get you a few hours of questioning Not in the US. I could download a hundred copies from every sketchy warez site on the internet without violating any laws.
The same is true here in the UK. It's not a crime to have the file, but it'd be reason enough for the police to request you 'voluntarily' answer some questions about where you got it from and why. If you refuse to answer questions however, then it's a crime.
Since when has it been a crime in the UK to refuse to answer questions from the police?
Re: Dead Drops: what to do if you see a USB stick sticking out of a wall
#49If I wanted to do something like this I'd create open WiFi access points called something like "DeadDrop". They wouldn't be connected to the internet. Instead they'd forward you to a locally hosted site that let you download and upload from local storage. WiFi has a lot of advantages. You eliminate the risk of USB attacks, physical damage to the device, and the actual location is unknown. The downside is that it woul…
I wonder if you could use Bluetooth Low Energy instead of WiFi as the power saving can last years. iBeacons have the potential to last years on a single battery. Probably not ideal for transferring large amounts of information though.
You could make the data available elsewhere in encrypted form and use the Bluetooth device to distribute the key and the URL where the data can be found.
Re: Dead Drops: what to do if you see a USB stick sticking out of a wall
#50e-geocaching