Items tagged with USB
What do you usually find in your mailbox? Love letters? Bills? People in Victoria, Australia are finding malware-laden USB drives in their mailboxes, or “letterboxes” as they are called down under.
The Victoria police warned citizens about the malicious USB drives, stating, “The USB drives are believed to be...
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The USB port is one of the most influential and important inventions of the modern computing era, but like just about anything that's innovative and pervasive, there's usually potential to do harm as well. Need proof of that? Check out the USB Kill, a sly little USB stick that's capable of frying just about any...
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Thumb drive makers have managed to cram quite a bit into the pinky-sized drives, but there are limits to capacity and to some degree performance, since there is only so much room to work with. Fortunately, there is a nice middle ground between thumb drives and larger external SSDs that conform to the popular...
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New York City’s subways have a terrible reputation. Any television show featured in NYC seems to dedicate at least one episode to the notorious transportation system. But New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo is looking to shed that image, and just unveiled a new design for the subway system which includes Wi-Fi, USB...
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Samsung leveraged its extensive NAND flash and storage IP and took aim at the high-performance portable storage market last year when it launched its impressive Portable SSD T1 external drive. There are countless portable flash drives and a multitude of external storage enclosures on the market that can house any standard 2.5” SSD. However,...
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As we discovered just the other day, Apple's latest iPad, Pro, isn't too repairable, scoring just 3 out of 10 on iFixit's scale - 10 being the best. Somewhat humorously, that's still a lot better the 1 out of 10 score the Surface Book received earlier this month.
Nonetheless, the teardown helped highlight a feature...
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Thunderbolt (and its Thunderbolt 2 successor) is a technically impressive high-speed data standard. Thunderbolt offers maximum bandwidth of 10Gbps while, Thunderbolt 2 doubled that to 20Gbps. However, the standard, which is used for everything from hyper-fast external storage solutions to external graphics cards, has...
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When they first came out, solid state drives were cost prohibitive for many people and they remained that way until NAND flash memory prices came crashing down like the careers of every actor on "The Celebrity Apprentice." Now not only are SSDs affordable, they're comparatively capacious and much faster than many of...
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MHL connectors have enabled advanced smartphones to both receive a charge as well as transmit 1080p video through the same USB cable for some time now, but as ever, technological progress is pushing things a bit more. This week, MHL has developed an Alternate Mode for the USB Type-C specification, which enables it to...
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In the summer, we learned of a severe issue that plagues a countless number of USB devices, tying into an exploit later called "BadUSB". Thanks to the efforts of Karsten Nohl, chief scientist at SR Labs, it was exposed that the firmware on many USB devices could easily be reprogrammed; the level of security on them...
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Another day, another report of a potential hack that could cause some real trouble. Researchers at Berlin's SR Labs have discovered that firmware can be rewritten on any sort of USB device, be it a keyboard, a mouse, or a flash drive, and exploits could involve logging keystrokes, eavesdropping on communications...
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A recent death that may have been caused by a faulty USB charger has prompted Australia's Fair Trading Commissioner, Rod Stowe, to issue a warning to consumers about the potentially fatal risk of using non-compliant or otherwise unapproved USB style charges. These are typically cheap knock-offs that can find at...
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Apple has worked hard to deliver synchronized data across all of your iDevices with iCloud, but for those who aren’t so keen on trusting the cloud with their data, there’s a device coming called the iStick that allows you to transfer files locally. Yes, it’s a USB flash drive (nothing interesting...
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It's tough to say when, or if, the heralded USB port will ever be truly replaced in the eyes of the masses. But Thunderbolt is sure working towards becoming a great secondary option, if not an outright replacement in time. At this year's NAB Show in Las Vegas, Intel announced Thunderbolt 2. It's the latest edition of...
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Great news for those waiting for the tried-and-true USB connector to follow the path of Apple's thinner, smaller lightning connector... at least in terms of overall size. While mini-USB and micro-USB are certainly tiny by most definitions, they're still a little chunky when seen on some of the world's slimmest phones...
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Yep, a USB condom. That term is mostly a dose of marketing brilliance, which is to say that grabs your attention while also serving as an apt description of the product. A little company called int3.cc has developed a product—a USB condom—that blocks the data pins in your USB device while leaving the power pins free. Thus,...
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Apple is certainly no stranger to dealing with counterfeit goods. In fact, entire counterfeit Apple stores have emerged in certain parts of Asia. It's easy to be a cynic and suggest that Apple simply overcharges for certain first-party accessories and cables, but then there's a story like this to bring it all into...
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Things are about to get faster. The USB Promoter Group announced that it has completed the USB 3.1 specification, which will enable SuperSpeed USB performance of 10Gbps. This, of course, rivals Intel and Apple’s blazing fast 10Gbps Thunderbolt interface, and the new USB connection will make use of...
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While it's obvious that innovation is on the fast-track when looking at consumer electronics as a whole, one has to wonder how long it'll take for the USB port to do more than it does. Perhaps that time has come. Texas Instruments has issued a new single-chip DockPort solution that enables DisplayPort, USB and power...
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Logitech is going for a certain look and feel with its Z600 Bluetooth stereo speakers, which is to say that it’s trying for a sleek, high-end-looking product that matches the luster of ultrabooks. (Especially MacBooks, it would seem.) The twin speakers are quite fetching, with graceful curves and a long, tall...
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While the cloud is great at times, there's still a need for physical file transfers to be quick, easy, and seamless. That's where Leef Technology comes in, this week introducing the Leef Bridge. It's described as the first USB flash drive for file sharing between Android phones and tablets, Macs and PCs. The product allows for easy transfers...
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Many have chided Apple for the lack of ports available on its high-end laptops. If you want, you can spec out a $3k+ MacBook Pro laptop... but you can't get more than two USB ports on it, no matter what sum you're ready to shell out. For hardcore power users, the limitations can become something of an annoyance, but...
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