11–20 of 57 posts
It's a cool idea, but I worry about malware. Malware is known to be able to infect USB drives put into the machine it's on, and it only needs to be plugged into another machine to infect it. They'll have to be systematically reformatted pretty often...
Worse than autorun, there have been buffer overflows against USB drivers and proof-of-concept exploits that allowed Firewire devices to read arbitrary physical memory through DMA access. I haven't seen this used in practice, but the risk is there. Bruce Schneier wrote about these attacks a few years ago: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/06/hacking_comput...
If you want to go down the Ken Thompson "Trusting Trust" hardware security rabbit hole, think about who manufactured your computer.
Would also make a neat Kickstarter project.
It's a cool idea, but I worry about malware. Malware is known to be able to infect USB drives put into the machine it's on, and it only needs to be plugged into another machine to infect it. They'll have to be systematically reformatted pretty often...
I don't think it's a big deal for people running linux!
It is a bad idea to plug untrusted hardware into your computer. Many Windows users have autorun enabled, so could be infected with malware as soon as they plug it in. This has been exploited by people pretending to run promotions and handing out infected USB drives in front of targeted businesses. Worse than autorun, there have been buffer overflows against USB drivers and proof-of-concept exploits that allowed Firew…
The idea is "neat" but completely impractical and extremely dangerous.
It is a bad idea to plug untrusted hardware into your computer. Many Windows users have autorun enabled, so could be infected with malware as soon as they plug it in. This has been exploited by people pretending to run promotions and handing out infected USB drives in front of targeted businesses. Worse than autorun, there have been buffer overflows against USB drivers and proof-of-concept exploits that allowed Firew…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think it's a big deal for people running linux!
You think incorrectly and having that assumption, you're exposing yourself to more risk. To assume Linux USB drivers, file systems and file managers don't contain vulnerabilities is to assume wrong.
Fun concept, but I immediately imagine someone going around smashing these with a hammer (or, perhaps more likely, city workers being sent out to remove them). :\ Here's a much more expensive project with a similar idea: http://torrentfreak.com/kiosk-of-piracy-an-offline-copy-of-t...