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SamurottX t1_jd7qvf0 wrote

Never plug random USB sticks into your computer. This is also a common attack vector for malware. I've never seen this used for actual bombs but there are also usb killers that send high voltage to your device and damage it.

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AudibleNod OP t1_jd7sawe wrote

Replying to SamurottX (#2,303,122)

Working in IT, I've seen the malware trick a few times.

Fortunately it's never something cool or espionage-y. It's just a script kiddie doing it for kicks. Nevertheless, never plug an unknown USB device (not just storage) into your system. And please don't do it on your work computer. All the IT guys are going to laugh at you.

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Thor4269 t1_jd7ueib wrote

It's awful they were wounded but that picture of the two police with shields in front of a laptop is really funny to me

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MitsyEyedMourning t1_jd7uj8s wrote

That's... wow. That's a whole different level of fear and intimidation. Won't lie, it's pretty impressive of an idea despite the horrible nature of it all.

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DeMalgamnated t1_jd7wm9p wrote

how much explosive can you put in a usb stick?

asking for a friend.

j/k

​

please don't put me on a list. wait what was that? i think som

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EmbarrassedHelp t1_jd7y4vt wrote

Replying to Thor4269 (#2,303,410)

I wish the article described what sort of wounds the reporter got, because for all we know it could have been a just a scratch. I can't imagine that a non government entity can find explosives powerful enough to do serious damage when hidden in a USB stick.

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illy-chan t1_jd7yy2t wrote

Replying to EmbarrassedHelp (#2,303,698)

>non government entity can find explosives powerful enough to do serious damage when hidden in a USB stick.

The cartels have some access to some pretty nasty stuff. And, if it went off as soon as the victim plugged it in, I bet you could really screw up their hand. Maybe their face depending on how close they were.

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bananafobe t1_jd802kc wrote

Replying to MitsyEyedMourning (#2,303,417)

In the early 90's, an attorney in South Africa investigating death squads was assassinated with a bomb hidden in a pair of headphones that he received in the mail.

It was referenced in a play I was watching, and something about it just stuck with me.

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ContraianD t1_jd80ntj wrote

Replying to EmbarrassedHelp (#2,303,698)

There has been an influx of military grade equipment coming in from Mexico the last few years, Uber driver rumors of armored personnel carriers and more. Just last October Guayaquil had a slew of car bombs and coordinated attacks in the middle of the city. Strange times as historically Ecuador's role in the drug trade was almost entirely money laundering as they use the U$D in place of their own currency, but that's no longer the case.

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SamurottX t1_jd85s19 wrote

Replying to EmbarrassedHelp (#2,303,698)

I'd assume it was mainly to their hand (mostly burns and a little shrapnel) because they were holding it when they plugged it in. The element of surprise probably did the most damage here because they probably had their hand around the entire thing and not treating it as if it was a bomb.

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DazedinDenver t1_jd8fxay wrote

Too bad they didn't include a picture of the other USB bombs. I'd love to see how big a stick it took to include even a tiny explosive. Pretty scary, all in all. I guess reporters are not only going to have to use air-gapped computers to check received flash drives but blast rooms with waldos to insert the USB sticks.

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TazBaz t1_jd8gkek wrote

Replying to salton (#2,304,331)

With a USB killer it’s pretty simple. 10 seconds per machine (I’m counting time moving between machines; it’s pretty much plug in, pop, unplug), you’re done in a couple minutes.

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MississippiJoel t1_jd8larg wrote

Replying to EmbarrassedHelp (#2,303,698)

Well, just think about how explosive even just a tiny bit of gunpowder is. Then think about all that space inside one of those plastic USB casings, and you've got a lot of room for a lot of gunpowder, and all you'd need for a trigger is just some way to run a current to it; two wires, basically.

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dittybopper_05H t1_jd8rnwt wrote

Replying to salton (#2,304,331)

Must have been worth it to that guy.

They don't talk about a motive in the article, but he must have held some kind of a grudge against the college. That's not the kind of thing you randomly do just for a lark.

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ChasmDude t1_jd8tw7b wrote

Replying to Boxthor (#2,304,466)

It's in the interest of journalists and newspapers to have some kind of sandboxed machine, but I'd doubt any smart whistleblower would want to physically deliver a USB either in-person or via the mail. If said whistleblower is technically competent and thorough, then a multi-layed digital drop makes much more sense these days. Fewer points of failure and all of them are in your control as long as you can configure it yourself rather than using off-the-shelf means like Signal*

(* Not to say Signal isn't good for everyday use, but I wouldn't even want whistleblower-level info on my phone in the first place.)

/rant

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ChasmDude t1_jd8uqib wrote

Replying to illy-chan (#2,303,750)

yeah people shouldn't underestimate the power of military-grade plastic explosives. Israel assassinated someone using a relatively small amount hidden in a cell phone in the not-too-distant past.

Thankfully, it's hard for non-military people/groups to get, but cartels manage to obtain a lot of weapons they're not supposed to have.

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zerton t1_jd9b5zf wrote

This is like something from James Bond

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L_Cranston_Shadow t1_jd9lle2 wrote

Replying to QuarantineViewer (#2,305,703)

Not likely, unless you try it in a poor or less populated area. It would be incredibly risky to try to stick it in your pocket and go through a metal detector or a millimeter wave scanner, also known as an Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) machine, and plastic explosives stick out like a sore thumb on even the older x-ray machines, and especially the newer CT machines that modern airports in wealthier and more developed countries use for baggage, and at least in the US, increasingly (smaller versions of) at checkpoints.

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Mummelpuffin t1_jd9phvv wrote

Replying to AudibleNod (#2,303,233)

In high school, in my IT shop, we made flash drives with auto-run batch files that would open and close CD drives over and over again. It would keep making new instances of itself so you couldn't stop it by just closing the console window or anything. It was a fun way to prove how easy it is.

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zzyul t1_jdb730v wrote

Replying to ChasmDude (#2,306,331)

Yep, the CIA created cigars filled with C4 in a plan assassinate Castro. They had to keep the weight low enough to avoid suspicion and leave enough tobacco in it so it would smoke and still smell like a cigar so there wasn’t a lot of C4 in it. The tests still showed it would blow a person’s face off if the cigar was near their mouth when it triggered.

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dittybopper_05H t1_jdc9npk wrote

Replying to dfpw (#2,310,175)

Remember this the next time you read an article about something with which you are not familiar.

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-gell-mann-amnesia-effect-is-as-follows-you

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>Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.
>
>In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

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