What is Digg?53 Comments
- musntSurfatWork, on 10/12/2007, -5/+50I'd rather inflict a boot sector virus to those who find mine.
- wwwdot1jesdotus, on 10/12/2007, -2/+42"This device belongs to Joe Somebody. The bank account and credit card information contained herein also belongs to Joe Somebody, SSN 488-24-2411. Please do not access the information or use the passwords contained herein. Please return to: 123 bubbles st, bobsville, SC, 12345. Thank you."
- PerroLoco, on 10/12/2007, -3/+38But, why would I want my lost USB drive sent to this guy?
What... ?
Oh, use my own address. - snurfle, on 10/12/2007, -1/+25Cool concept!
I believe I'll expand on the idea a bit...
5 minutes in VB and I can write a small hack that will invisibly gmail me the IP address of 'localmachine' automatically. (and no, not 127.0.0.1 !)
Actually, the possibilities are limitless... anyone want to throw out some ideas? I believe I'm going to pursue this! - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+22I'd like it to phone home, too. I mean, if some steals/finds my lost business flash drive, it would be nice to have something for the authorities to work off of.
- controlguy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+18... and don't forget to include a picture of yourself so that they can recognize you as the rightful owner when they return it.
- crazyglue, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17Just remember to disable autorun on your own computer... Infecting yourself has to be no fun.
- Netmindstorm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11I'd say get the host name, username and maybe even a list of their browser's bookmarks/favorites. Like you said, email yourself the info and then if the user doesn't contact you, you contact them and identify all the information you have about them (assuming you have a valid reply to email address--this might be hard to come by--not sure). This way you can claim to now know one another and be "friends" and "friends" naturally help one another out.
Additionally, you could set up a webpage that describes how to return the flash drive and set the default browser page to that web url. If you do any of this, please share you efforts.
Obviously if autorun is disabled or if the user is just a little computer savvy/don't use Windows, this probably won't be too effective, but you never know. - abyssknight, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Dugg for screenshot with TrueCrypt and shell integration.
- Nougat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10I'm interested in what you come up with - keep us appraised.
- pinkgreenblue, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10I personally have my USB thumb drive on my keychain. If I give out my address, whoever finds it has the keys to my home. My insurance would probably do nothing if he were to rob me because there are no signs of breaking and entering and they have no reason to take my word for it. If I give out my phone number, he can do a reverse phone number lookup online. For this reason, I would include just a secondary email address of mine (something that Google wouldn't return any results for). Better yet, just an online phone number. I use a free service called PrivatePhone that gives you a phone number in an area code of your choice. Whenever anyone calls, it goes straight to voicemail, and the website then emails you the message straight to your inbox. This way, I have the guy's phone number (the service gives you the date and time that the person called, and from which number they called), assuming he used his home or cell phone and not Skype or something. If the guy has my name, he can then link any documents on the drive to me. I think my way is pretty safe in that it keeps me anonymous. I could ask him to mail it to my PO box and he will never have any idea who I am. I could repay him by gifting him with some iTunes credit or pay him through PayPal (would that give him my name?) or buy him something from his Amazon wish list, if the guy is somewhat computer savvy. Finally, encrypt/lock your info! What are everyone's thoughts on my method?
- Empyrean, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11USB Drive- "Help! Help! Im lost!"
The avg computer user- File>Format - "Not anymore, now stfu."
Yea yea I know, bury me. - donutz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9"do with my credit cards as s/he wishes"
I'd be careful with that. You wouldn't want to in a legal sense give someone permission to use your card. If the CC company finds out, they may say "well, you preauthorized those charges, so sorry bub". - ChronicColonic, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10I use my flash drive to run algorithms in a complex robot I am building. If they happen to use the flash drive in a similar robot, the robot will travel directly to my house. No worries!
- Nougat, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11You have just defined RTFA.
- Netmindstorm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8actually there's another idea, have a audio file with the something like "Murder, death, kill" repeating over and over and if they use your flash, start playing the audio file in a loop.
- Netmindstorm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7http://duggmirror.com/mods/Have_Your_Lost_USB_Drive_Ask_For_Help_2/
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7the firewall, if it's any good and has been properly configured, would probably prevent that from working but still, it is a good idea. You would need something that kills the firewall process..or name the program something convincing (like microsoftupdater.exe or something) to fool the person into letting it continue. Of course, if this happens every time the person plugs in the USB drive, they may catch on (eventhough it may be too late, but if it happens in a university computer lab it would be tough to narrow down who has really stolen it).
The best idea would be to write a program that password protects the USB drive and erases the data if the incorrect password is entered x amount of times.
I'm confused about the original idea though. What happens if the user just deletes the autorun file? - 5thfreedom, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7http://www.digg.com/mods/Have_Your_Lost_USB_Drive_Ask_For_Help_2
Nice "2" there digitalgopher. - marpstar, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9I had a 2GB flash drive stolen after my car was broken into - I'd definitely be up for some boot sector virus action...
- AM088, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Just yesterday I was wondering if I could use Autorun on USB drives... Great timing...
- Nougat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Well if either file is deleted, then no go. The premise here is that the person who's found the device is honest.
- IEatHamburgers, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I think they only autorun on WinXP SP2 but I'm not sure
- ilferetl, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5nice idea, i suppose to avoid this autorun at home, all you'd have to do is tell windows to do nothing, then you never have to see your own annoyance. kinda reminds me of that little card I have tucked away in my wallet that begs the finder to at least drop my driver's license in the mail so I don't have to wait in line at DMV, and do with my credit cards as s/he wishes.
- Nougat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3In case you're having a brain fart, this'll work on any pluggable device that will autorun data files, i.e., MP3 players.
- Hurricane, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Just diasble autorun, which btw you should do anyway to prevent Sony rootkit type problems when you insert disks.
......................
Of course if evrybody had autorun disabled this article would be pointless. - yathosho, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4simple and not a bad idea... but not only since usb hacksaw (http://www.hak5.org/wiki/USB_Hacksaw) one should disable the autorun feature
- ostracize, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2If the MAC address or some other PC "fingerprint" doesn't match a list of acceptable computers, you can spawn off your program. Or, the usb key can poll a website for a "LOST" status which you can set from home.
The program could:
Ask the user to return it the same way the article explains
Do the emailing/spywaresque stuff you describe.
Delete sensitive files (you do keep backups don't you?) or rename all files to a hidden type if delete is too extreme
If you want to be sinister, you could install a virus or hold their files "ransom" by running the data through an encryption key or something (send usb key back, I return a better usb key with the decryption key). The legality on this one is supect.
Now that I think about it, you could do this with your laptop as well. Just hope the thief tries to boot up at least once before formatting. - tangerine, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Call me simple. My USB drives always have a read-me file with my contact info in case I lose it.
I have not lost one yet, but if I do, I make it very clear that if THEY have it, I am LOOKING for it and please call, email........whatever....
I never have personal info on them...just utilities to repair and troubleshooot computers. - z4pp4, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Or use USB switchblade: http://www.hak5.org/wiki/USB_Switchblade for our more evil cousins...
- kendetroit, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4InfoWorld recently did a security test and left 20 USB keys laying around in a office. Sure enough, when workers found them they plugged them right into their machines. There is a huge vulnerability right there. But that is a good sign for this autorun software.
too bad DCOT Diggs his own stories (from the website):
"Actually, just submitting the articles to Digg has made a huge difference. My page hits nearly tripled yesterday! I do not expect that this will continue but it sure was cool to watch it happen!" - LiquidPenguin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I haven't really been keeping up with VB since 6.0 or thereabouts. If I remember right, VB programs typically need to be installed to ensure the dependencies (ActiveX or whatever Microsoft wants to call them this year) are up to date and available. So just throwing together a VB app and chucking the .exe as an autorun isn't always going to work on every PC, assuming every PC will actually run the autorun.
Lots of assumptions. When dealing with autorun, you want to minimize assumptions. - Netmindstorm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Depending on the type of data you keep on your drive, I think your idea is very reasonable and helps to protect your identity. And being that you should "trust no one", I would say it's the safe way to go (as opposed to giving out your name, address, et al)
- Torawk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2It should be easy enough to change that to open an html file with the same info (google "autorun open html"). With perhaps an inline frame that hits an external page if you happen to have a webserver where you can see the logs. Or just a link to your own page with more info.
- Hurricane, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@wwwdot1jesdotus
QUOTE:
"This device belongs to Joe Somebody. The bank account and credit card information contained herein also belongs to Joe Somebody, SSN 488-24-2411. Please do not access the information or use the passwords contained herein. Please return to: 123 bubbles st, bobsville, SC, 12345. Thank you." END QUOTE
Yeah, bit if you actually READ the article you will note that he uses Truecrypt on his thumbdrive, therefore NONE of that info is compromised. - stupidmoron, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1well, it's is a good idea tough, i've lost my usb twice and never found them till now.
- loates, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Nice concept, but what about when you haven't lost your flash drive and you have to deal with the automatic windows that pop up each time you load the drive in your computer? Annoying... I personally will stick with online data storage. That way I can access my files from anywhere and don't have to worry about losing a flash drive. (http://www.myDataBus.com is the service I use, FYI)
- yugiohdan6, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3this is a dupe, this guy really should have gotten all the diggs
http://digg.com/mods/Have_Your_Lost_USB_Drive_Ask_For_Help - AF-Geek, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Nothing wrong with submitting your own stuff.
If others think it's good, it gets Dugg. If not, no big deal. - IEatHamburgers, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2A month too late, dammit
- sputza, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2http://duggmirror.com/mods/Have_Your_Lost_USB_Drive_Ask_For_Help_2/
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Well digg me down for not being a geek, I didn't even know USB devices could autorun. Seems like a *massive* security hole to me?
So I will now of course have my USB memory stick do something interesting when inserted into a computer. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0I lost a USB key in New York at DigitalLife with this sort of thing on it; never saw or heard about it again. So, this could just as easily be ineffectie as it is effective
- MrMysterious, on 10/12/2007, -9/+3Darn, too bad this is down...I'd be interested in this. But that is the beauty of Digg, bookmark and come back later!
- richste, on 10/12/2007, -13/+4good idea, ive got a text file in mine saying LOST DRIVE!! lol this is a bit more sophisticated
- PerroLoco, on 10/12/2007, -12/+2@bryxal
actually, I agree with you and I considered it, however, for the the precise reason you described, I went the other way. - vypergts, on 10/12/2007, -20/+6Oh good, so you've lost your flash drive and any important data on it. Now the finder has enough of your personal info to commit identity theft as well...
- tont0r, on 10/12/2007, -20/+4What? Did you steal someones USB drive?
- bryxal, on 10/12/2007, -18/+2you know it have been funnier if you hadn't said
"What ...?
Oh use my own adress"
But i wouldn't of been suprised if you would of been dug down and then someone said like
"ID1OT!!! your @dr3ss!!111one one one" - HanSolo69, on 10/12/2007, -25/+2i'm not even sure what a USB drive ask for help is.
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