21–30 of 198 posts
This reminds me of the Etherkiller page (sending 120 volt to various devices: NICs, HDDs...): http://www.fiftythree.org/etherkiller/
"During a stop-over in Hong Kong, he finds a spare USB key in his hotel room. Curious, he inserts it into his laptop. By the time he arrives in Australia, his computer is infected."[1]
This was the one of the infection vectors for a large flare-up between the Chinese government and a number of Australian based mining companies, all well before the Snowden leaks that have only made the world more complex.
Given the choice between frying an employee's USB / computer (small monetary loss) and allowing trade secrets to fall into the hands of competitors / customers (large monetary loss), it's not crazy to opt for the former.
Standard practice has even gone further. A colleague of mine purchases fresh laptops for when he goes overseas and then never uses them again. He doesn't even work in an industry where commercial secrets are common. I'd hope that anywhere that features security implications or commercial secrets would also act at this level.
Perhaps an innocuous version of this, which starts a high pitch whistle, would be useful in a corporate environment. Less destructive but resulting in the the same security awareness.
[1]: http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/special_eds/20100419/cyber/
Is there any chance this could be dangerous to the human and not just his device?
Looks like I'm stocking up on Raspberry Pi-s to deal with my curiosity from now on...
http://www.mouser.com/applications/usb30_circuit_protection/
http://www.te.com/content/dam/te/global/english/products/Cir...
It would be cool to create a version of this that just sounded a really, really loud siren. Then you could leave it lying around the office, and listen out for the bunnies.
This is just one of many reasons why you should not ever stick unknown things in your healthy ports (or your healthy things in unknown ports). Not without protection. Safety first. But I'm a firm believer that people should be able to consent to this kind of behavior if they really wish to.
This is just one of many reasons why you should not ever stick unknown things in your healthy ports (or your healthy things in unknown ports). Not without protection. Safety first. But I'm a firm believer that people should be able to consent to this kind of behavior if they really wish to.
* There is a device called a 'USB Condom' but it's only for charging purposes, and completely restricts data access.