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USB 'Dead Drops'

Posted by Soulskill on from the peer-to-peer-sneakernet dept.

Okian Warrior writes "Aram Bartholl is building a series of USB dead drops in New York City. Billed as 'an anonymous, offline, peer to peer file-sharing network in public space,' he has embedded USB sticks as file cache devices throughout the city. Bartholl says, 'I am "injecting" USB flash drives into walls, buildings and curbs accessible to anybody in public space. You are invited to go to these places (so far 5 in NYC) to drop or find files on a dead drop. Plug your laptop to a wall, house or pole to share your files and data.' Current locations (more to come) include: 87 3rd Avenue, Brooklyn, NY (Makerbot), Empire Fulton Ferry Park, Brooklyn, NY (Dumbo), 235 Bowery, NY (New Museum), Union Square, NY (Subway Station 14th St), and West 21st Street, NY (Eyebeam)"

7 of 322 comments (clear)

  1. Yeeeahhh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Turn off AutoPlay first, kids. You'll thank me later.

    1. Re:Yeeeahhh by HungryHobo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Ya I would have thought an open wifi network connected to a little ftp server (but for fun not the internet)would make a far better dead drop.
      for one you wouldn't have to be so obvious about connecting to it.
      Sitting in a coffee shop across the street would be far less conspicuous.

  2. Dead drops? by nebaz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is that kind of like a Glory Hole? Probably the same number of viruses.

    --
    Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
  3. a new trend by tverbeek · · Score: 5, Funny

    For an encore, he'll be setting up "Drop Dead" sites around the city. These will be little knobs mounted to walls, for anonymous people to "share" biological materials by walking up to them and licking them.

    --
    http://alternatives.rzero.com/
  4. Good way to get your laptop attacked by techmuse · · Score: 5, Informative

    So basically, you are being invited to connect a USB device from an unknown source, with unknown code on it, to your machine. There have been many instances of people leaving USB sticks with exploit binaries around for people to find. You find the stick, stick it in your machine, and are promptly exploited. Regardless of whether the creator of the dead drops hasn't done this intentionally themselves (hopefully, they haven't), you have no idea what might have been placed on the sticks by others.

  5. Re:Sounds great! by djdavetrouble · · Score: 5, Funny

    kudos to the person who will find them all and format to ext4 file system.

    awesome post, but since it is almost halloween, why not a killer file system like reiserfs?

    --
    music lover since 1969
  6. Re:Cool by AndreR · · Score: 5, Funny

    And then two dozen ./ users came by and said, "Hey, free karma!"