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The front desk at my university's library was lending pen drives to people who needed to get scans off the copy machines (which were not connected to the networ
by Camillo 14y ago
The front desk at my university's library was lending pen drives to people who needed to get scans off the copy machines (which were not connected to the network, for some reason). Abandoned pen drives were put into a drawer and recycled in this way.
The pen drive I was given was unusually large and had the name of a Chinese university on it. When I plugged it into my MacBook, I was asked to choose a layout for the new keyboard. It turns out that there are pen drives that actually contain two USB devices, a mass storage drive and a keyboard, and the keyboard part can be programmed to type rogue commands at night (I guess Windows doesn't alert you that loudly when a keyboard is connected, so it's more likely to go unnoticed).
I tried to get someone to help investigate this possible rogue device, but nobody cared. I wonder if it was an espionage tool.
- luke-stanley 14y agoIf this is true, take one or two of them. This would be great fun to investigate further. Consider taking photos of the inside if you can disassemble it without breaking it. Find a few computer science student, get them in a room and ask them to evaluate the device. If this fails, find a highly ranked, trusted user on hacker news, and send it to them if they are willing.
- Camillo 14y agoI don't know if I should believe you, but anyway, this happened several months ago. I tried getting a computer security professor involved, but nothing came of it. I told the library to quarantine the drive when I handed it back, but who knows what they did.
- mdxn 14y agoI know a couple of CS security students at my university (myself included) that would LOVE to look into those if what you say is true.
- Camillo 14y agoEven if I assumed you could be trusted, the incident happened several months ago and I no longer have the pendrive.