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Phil23 Guru Joined: 27/03/2016 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1667
Posted: 06:37am 19 Jul 2018
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Hi All,
Wondering if anyone knows anything about this?
It was in some promo material from RS Components a few months back. I presumed it was a flash drive.
But just plugged it in before binning it & it turns out to be a "USB Input Device" that it creates in Device Manager.
It then sends out keystrokes to open the Run Box & enters "http://secure-ctw.com/pm", which then send you to RS's website.
Different.... Wonder if it can be re-programed....
Cheers
Phil.
Edited by Phil23 2018-07-20
Azure Guru Joined: 09/11/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 446
Posted: 06:49am 19 Jul 2018
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A lot of Promo USB drives have some info pre loaded on them that cannot be erased or reprogrammed. Formatting the drive does not usually effect the preprogrammed part of the drive.
Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9751
Posted: 07:00am 19 Jul 2018
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Careful with those.
Some of them are ID theft things. With RS Components, you are probably pretty safe, but ANY flash drive that tries to execute code to log keystokes and send them off somewhere, could be misused for the purposes of stealing all sorts of information.Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops!
Boppa Guru Joined: 08/11/2016 Location: AustraliaPosts: 816
Posted: 09:05am 19 Jul 2018
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Pretty much the standard with promo usb sticks, Company I used to work with ordered a few hundred (300 from memory) they programmed our website link onto them from the factory and that couldnt be changed- which was a pain when they changed the company name lol
CaptainBoing Guru Joined: 07/09/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 2171
Posted: 12:05pm 19 Jul 2018
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I echo Grog's caution here - never plug in a device that you don't know its "heritage" entirely. A favourite trick around the banking district of London a couple of years ago was very similar idea on devices that plant crap on machines, with a view to getting somewhere important, nice and quiet so as not to arouse any suspicions. Major companies have recently (last 5 years or so) completely locked down any USB ports as the devices can look like a HID (keyboard, mouse etc - just as this one does) and the'rs no stopping it. I could build a device in about an hour to act like a keyboard and open up some site in a browser . If I can do it so can any script kiddie. Anything you can do from a keyboard... i.e. Windows R, HTTP://hackmypc.com, return... and it's almost certainly too late.
They can be manufactured for pennies and then conveniently "dropped" in areas where people will pick them up, pavements, bars, toilets, tube trains, buses, taxies... in huge numbers - they only have to be lucky once. People take them and either think "ooh! free USB drive" or "Hah! someone has dropped this lets have a poke around and see what we find" Only to get pwned.
As with most hacks, the weakest point is the loonie behind the keyboardEdited by CaptainBoing 2018-07-20
Malibu Senior Member Joined: 07/07/2018 Location: AustraliaPosts: 260
Posted: 06:55pm 19 Jul 2018
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Or, as in the case of StuxNet, can cause some significant havoc. The initial seed was from a USB stick on a Windows system, but its target was the Seimens PLC systems in Iran's nuclear program.
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