Let’s say you randomly stumble across a flash drive out in the wild. What do you do? Well, if’n yer an idjit, you plug it into your computer to see what’s on it. If you are a supremely lucky idjit, there will be nothing of interest on the drive. If you are an unlucky idjit, the drive will have some form of malware on it that will invade your computer and either delete your files or steal your identity. And now, if youa re a supremely unlucky idjit, you’ll get *this* little nugget of joy:
This Treacherous 220-Volt Flash Drive Can Fry Your Computer In Seconds
The drive is packed with not just electronics but also capacitors. Plug it in and it automatically charges up the capacitors, which then discharge back into your computer until the motherboard is *physically* fried. The hard drive and your data aren’t destroyed, but, hey, shouldn’t be too hard to load some malware on the drive that will encrypt all your files and *then* trash your motherboard. So you take your burned-out computer to get fixed, only to find all your data unrecoverable. Wasting your time, money and resources.
Now, what would be *really* evil would be a setup that doesn’t just use the little capacitors in the flash drive to damage your computer, but somehow attacks the battery. In the early days of laptops there were a number of celebrated incidents of the lithium ion batteries bursting into flames, not only destroying the computer but potentially destroying the building or vehicle they were in, with the added potential of causing injuries and death. I don’t know if a virus or a set of capacitors (or a combo) could actually cause a modern laptop battery to eat itself; I expect it’s most likely not feasible. But if you own a computer, or work with computers, or run a business that has employees who use computers, perhaps it would be best to *assume* that any random USB flash drive you come across will, at the very least, physically destroy the innards of your computer, and could even burn your house down and summon up angry elder gods from some dark dimension.
That said… imagine the fun *you* can have with one of these. I would not suggest leaving one in a location where a random schmoe would get hold of it, but instead leave it somewhere – a desk drawer, perhaps – where the only person who would access it would be someone stealing from you.