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Dead Drops P2P File Sharing Spreads Around Globe

Posted by Soulskill on from the will-someday-enable-a-revolution-in-dystopia dept.

Lucas123 writes "After beginning as an art project 3 years ago in Manhattan to thwart government online spying and offer a physical depiction of our digitally-connected society, a trend of embedding USB thumb drives in walls has caught on and spread to every continent but Antarctica. Dead Drops, as the anonymous P2P files sharing network is called, now has more than 1,200 locations worldwide and has morphed as participants have become more creative in not only where they place the drives, but how they share files, including creating WiFi locations. The thumb drives, which range in size from a few megabytes to 60GB, have allowed people to share music, video, personal photos, poetry, political discourse, or artwork anonymously. Dead Drops creator, German artist Aram Bartholl, said the project is a way to 'un-cloud' file sharing."

5 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. Why yes! by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'd be happy to plug my netbook / phone / multimedia device into this unknown thumb drive. Why not? I've got anti-virus...

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    If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
    1. Re:Why yes! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      don't mount the drive as root...
      or better yet, use a livecd boot and only mount a small partition you set aside for this.

    2. Re:Why yes! by i+kan+reed · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yes, windows blows, but a smart operating system doesn't protect you. A known flaw in the drivers for a USB drive could still allow execution of arbitrary code.

  2. I used an ARDUINO to load one of these... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    I used an ARDUINO to load one of these with BITCOINS and BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE.

  3. Re:What a great idea! by Rockoon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you're running a system that is vulnerable to infected USB devices or media files, that's pretty much on you.

    Sigh.. there is no technical reason why a untrusted USB device couldnt present itself as a Human Interface Device (HID - keyboard, mouse, both, ..) and then open up a shell on your *nix box and run arbitrary shell commands.

    There is in fact concern that future USB drives will be manufactured to "phone home" using such techniques.

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    "His name was James Damore."