Bomb disguised as USB flash drive exploded when inserted into journalist's computer

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Originally published at: Bomb disguised as USB flash drive exploded when inserted into journalist's computer | Boing Boing

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Oh shit. We already have to take off our shoes and can’t bring full tubes of toothpaste onto airplanes because of this crap, now this.

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Never just plug an USB thingy from an unknown source into your regular computer.
Exploding ones are new (to me, anyway), but “USB drives” that are basically disguised capacitors that will zap your machine have been around for a while.
Not to mention all kinds of serious malware.

Looks like the air-gapped standalone box needs to be upgraded with some sort of robot arm and surrounded by sandbags, though.

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It’s quite an escalation to go from “don’t insert this if you care about your computer/what’s on it” to “don’t insert this if you want to keep living”…

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It’s a flash-bang drive.

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“Don’t stick strange objects into things you care about” has applications beyond the technical.

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I was going to say the same thing!

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It’s even worse than malware. USB devices can identify as things other than storage. At lease they can identify as keyboards very easily and so any USB device could send key presses. Someone creative with a knowledge of all the other USB devices classes could probably come up with many more bad things they could do. They can identify as network devices too. I haven’t thought through all the other things they could do.

But yeah, explosives in USB is a new one.

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It takes drop attacks to a new level.

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Universal Serial Bomb

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Ahh, the good old days, when Killer USBs only killed laptops.

Prototype

And then productized

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Never use public USB chargers, either. Airport chargers? Hell no.

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Right, but if you are a journalist, especially one who might investigate corporate or political corruption just not using random USB flash drives is not necessarily an option. It’s a totally reasonable way for a whistleblower to get information to a journalist. I hope that most journalists who are in this situation would have a dedicate computer for this purpose, but not everyone can be tech savvy all the time.

I mean, sort of? This is obviously more of an attempt at intimidation of all journalists (i.e., terrorism) rather than an attempt to hurt a specific journalists. After all, letter bombs have been things for decades, and could easily have more actual explosive material than you can cram into a thumb drive housing.

At one point there were USB cables available that had a button on them to connect the data pins. The intent being that you could use a charger with relatively low risk (explosives non-withstanding), and only connect the data pins if needed and if you trusted the device. It never really caught on.

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I use a portapow whenever I am travelling so that I can charge from other people’s chargers. The data pins have been removed so that only power can be transferred. They are cheap protection and I have given them to my kids also.

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Aww, you’re no fun.

Sticking strange objects into things I care about is maybe half my sex life. Sticking things I care about into strange objects is the other half.

Wait, I’m sorry, was that too much information?

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