Ecuador: someone is mailing USB sticks with explosives in them to journalists

[thewayne]

One exploded as a journo at a TV station plugged it in to his computer, causing mild injuries to his hand and face. Another sent to a radio station did not explode - the drive was plugged into an extension cord and didn't get enough voltage to detonate.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/03/journalist-plugs-in-unknown-usb-drive-mailed-to-him-it-exploded-in-his-face/

https://it.slashdot.org/story/23/03/22/2048210/explosives-replace-malware-as-the-scariest-thing-a-usb-stick-may-hide

Comments

[acelightning]

This reminds me of the Unabomber, who mailed explosives to various people he disapproved of.

If I ever get a package from Ecuador, I won't open it. (For one thing, it might have had to do with Jules Assange, who was being given sanctuary in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

[thewayne]

Very true, I'd sort of forgotten about him (the Unabomber). I haven't read anything about Assange's tribulations re extradition to the USA, last I heard it was ruled that he could be extradited but that he still had an appeal or two left.

[acelightning]

The Unabomber was targeting science professors - he had some crackpot theory nobody would take seriously, and he was Punishing Those Eggheads For Their Disbelief.

The rest of the civilized world wants to see Assange locked up; they feel the US is too lenient. I won't comment in public.

[thewayne]

I am not a fan of Assange.  IMO, he's an anarchist muck-raker who wants to see the world burn.  BUT.  I don't like what the U.S. is doing - he is not an American citizen and is not bound by American law regarding revealing secret material.  Their hounding of him for unveiling something terrible that the U.S. military did - I think it's a good thing it was revealed.  Back to the muck-raking part, he claims the shield that he is a 'journalist' while at the same time revealing information that no reputable journalist would have in that form.  He didn't redact names that resulted in people being placed in jeopardy.  So while I have no love for him, I also hate what our country is doing about it.

[acelightning]

He was a troublemaker in Australia, and in Poland. He mistreated a teenage girl who was pregnant with his child, and harassed my friend who rescued the girl and tried to keep Assange away from her until she gave birth. And the things he did to my friend, and how fucked up the girl got because of all of this - she used all sorts of psychological tactics to manipulate my friend into becoming her absolute slave, and she threatened to have me killed while I was in Australia, because my friend was paying more attention to me than to her. And he terrified my friend's mother, who was in her 80s at the time, because he told the police to raid their house because he had "child p*rn" on his computer (a story he wrote about a young woman over the age of consent acting out a schoolgirl fantasy involvind mild bondage. Took me a while to get Mom calmed down - I was closer to her age than his at the time. (That didn't weird me out, though.) Assange makes pond scum look like whipped cream.

[thewayne]

You told me some of this before, but added a lot more here.  Yeah, definitely a warped creep.  I like your line about pond scum and whipped cream!

[kathmandu]

Yeeech. One would've hoped the tiny space in a thumb drive would not be enough for any significant amount of explosive...

[thewayne]

If it fully detonated, it might be able to maim your hand, or if an unlucky fragment got blown into your eye and you weren't wearing glasses, could conceivably kill.  I expect a lot of reporters there are buying extension cables for low-power hubs to give them some space in case of a bang. I have two laptops, a high-power Asus gaming laptop and a MacBook Pro.  Interestingly, the Asus - even though it has a USB-C port which my Mac does not - is much lower-powered USB ports.  I can not charge my iPad on the Asus, no problems on my Mac.  So the Asus would be much safer to plug those booby-trapped flash drives in to, not that I would want to handle them!!!

[disneydream06]

UGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!
People are SICK. :o
Hugs, Jon

[thewayne]

Yep, that's about the sum of it.  Clever bastards.

[silveradept]

Yet another reason not to plug in strange devices, I guess. Hadn't realized explosives could go that small and that powerful.

[thewayne]

Well, I don't see why not.  I don't think you'd be able to cram more than an ounce or two in there, but it would be enough to potentially maim someone.  The mistake they made was it requires a full-powered USB socket, and those aren't always common on laptops, which most people use these days.  My MacBook Pro, 2015 model, will charge my iPad whereas my Asus gaming laptop which actually has a USB-C port, will not.  But when it comes to desktops, those are usually full-powered ports.