141–150 of 198 posts
If any USB mouse, USB keyboard or soon also USB charger is a potential laptop annihilator, then maybe it's something wrong with the USB standard.
Someone joked that this would be useful to ensure people won't randomly plug USB drives into their computers. Sounds insane, except that... "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 a…
> Given the choice between frying an employee's USB / computer (small monetary loss) That's a good way to start a fire and have a _large_ monetary loss on your hands.
First the total power of the USB port is ~2,5W on average and given the constraints of the device in terms of size (~ a normal USB thumb drive) you cannot realistically store this more than a second or so (e.g. 100V in 1000µF is only 10 Ws).
With 2.5W you can make things hot to touch, but for igniting anything flamable, you'd have to design some thermally decoupled element to dissipate the power, and get glowing hot (e.g. a small coil of resistance wire in a car's cigarette lighter). Unfortunately devices on a PCB are normally very well thermally coupled to said PCB, so the energy spreads fast limiting the temperature of the individual components. Also things on a PCB tend to break at much lower temperatures than what you'd need to ignite anything. Also they will already desolder themselves at ~200 degC.
If any USB mouse, USB keyboard or soon also USB charger is a potential laptop annihilator, then maybe it's something wrong with the USB standard.
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Does anyone actually care that their plugs are elegant? In any case, your Type J is missing the fact that in the UK, the cables point down towards the floor rather than sticking out, keeping them flush with the wall and often allowing you to hide the plugs behind things.
of course. Did you miss the article yesterday about Macbook going with USB-C? Apple has made bank on just getting people to buy better plugs and cables (USB, Magsafe, Lightning connector, etc.). People also spend tons of money to hide cables when mounting TV screens.
Here are parts to design into your USB device to prevent that. http://www.mouser.com/applications/usb30_circuit_protection/ http://www.te.com/content/dam/te/global/english/products/Cir...
There are straight up isolators, like ADUM4160. For USB2, they're limited to 12mbit/sec though, because USB2 has a single bidirectional (terrible) data line.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:USB_signal_example.s...
The old school version required a portable generator. Miniaturization at its finest!
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Another option would be to just tell them and not play games with them.
Whilst an option, I feel it's a bad one if security is actually a priority. Having worked at companies who actually have a high level concern over computer security, telling someone simply isn't enough. Being told is passive. Passive defence and active defence are two entirely different states of mind. Defending against an attack needs to be active and instinctual. Every time you open, close, or set down your laptop,…
This is so not cool.
Why? Sounds like a way to increase security awareness. Although, I suppose a huge blaring alarm might do just as well. Leave them around your office/parking lot and see who uses them. Then have a chat. Better they plug in a bad device you control vs one carrying a truly malicious payload. (Probably a good idea to attempt to phish employees, too.)
Say you replace the contents of one of those bright-coloured sticky sweet liquors with a similarly-coloured cleaning fluid? Then leave it in your liquor cabinet, "to teach people to not touch your stuff". I'm not even sure that's legal.
I once heard a story of someone storing their concentrated GHB (a drug, clear liquid), in a vodka bottle. If someone had accidentally poured themselves a shot of that, the consequences would have been pretty bad.
On a similar note, I'm not sure about the US, but in the Netherlands, it's actually illegal to booby-trap your own home. If an intruder gets hurt, you're liable. I don't think this law exists to protect burglars, but instead it is to protect well-intentioned unlucky people from "accidents" caused by terrible and idiotic "security" measures.
Makes me think about the car-alarm in Snow Crash, which delivered a fatal several thousand volts to whoever tried to open it without a key (or maybe it was a flame-thrower, I forgot).
If any USB mouse, USB keyboard or soon also USB charger is a potential laptop annihilator, then maybe it's something wrong with the USB standard.
I think every other non-optical port on your computer is just as susceptible to electrical attack. The only real difference is that USB provides its own power.
This is a human delivery mechanism for a physical attack. You could make a DVI cable that was covertly a water hose, but that's not a DVI problem.
Someone joked that this would be useful to ensure people won't randomly plug USB drives into their computers. Sounds insane, except that... "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 a…
