you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 126 points 3 years ago (22 children)

Remember kids, don't ever plug something in to your computer that you don't trust or are unsure about. Picking up flashdrive off the street and plugging them in is one of the easiest ways to get malware installed on your computer.

  • source
  • hideshow 22 child comments
  • [–] 79 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    That's why I take mine in to work to plug in.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    Previous work got USB sent to them via post and they had to access the data on this drives. These drives came from end customers, so they had two computers specifically for the purpose of retrieving images from the USB sticks and burning them on CDs.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 35 points 3 years ago (9 children)

    Theres also usb drives that are designed to short circuit your computer. Frying the motherboard.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 9 child comments
  • [–] 21 points 3 years ago (8 children)

    USB Killers are expensive though. No one's intentionally ditching those for randos to find

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 8 child comments
  • [–] 6 points 3 years ago

    Expensive is relative. You can find a sketchy USB Killer on AliExpress for like $6.

    Maybe expensive as a single throwaway device, but not very expensive to cause pure chaos to a bunch of random people.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 6 points 3 years ago (5 children)

    Are they? I thought they were basically just a few capacitors hooked up wrong to a USB port.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [–] 7 points 3 years ago (4 children)

    Capacitors alone are not enough.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 4 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    Capacitors a transistor and an op-amp. Thats a couple cents of components.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 28 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    one of the easiest ways to get malware installed on your computer

    Only if you are the child of an Iran nuclear engineer. (cough stuxnet cough. )

    If not, visiting .ru porn sites is much more likely to lead to infection.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments