I wonder how would this couple with my own 1Gb "bubblegum" Kingmax Flash drive. That is, one I have that is so small it seems like one of those Trident gum sticks! You just "stick" it in the USB cable socket, with the copper-connector end facing inside.

That used to freak out some dudes back when I first bought it one year ago, as they thought I was sticking a Memory Stick into the USB connector!!!

Title says it all...

Brings a whole new perspective on the old "the dog ate my homework".

Mad as a box of frogs!

<runs off to make his own sawed-off USB key>

The possibilities are endless. Industrial espionage for starters. You are limited by your imagination.

So why can't you do a youtube video with a nice walkthrough on making the USB weirdity? Can't be bothered? Not useful? hmm.

Spies might like it..

Not too long ago i demonstrated to a work colleague how to upload several 10s of meg onto a floppy disc.

It actually just had a FTP client on the disc and I just used that to upload it onto a server, but I convinced him it was all going onto a disc via a "Magic program".

He is currently doing an IT degree it makes me shudder thinking about it...

Install the flash drive in a cable that keeps both ends.

Nobody will suspect a USB cable of being a storage device and plenty of people carry cables to connect cameras or charge cell phones.

Extra credit if it still works as a cable.

Start your watches!

Allow the USB to "pass through", saving the information transmitted to an embedded flash drive. Maybe the other end of the cable could include a wifi transmitter so that the flash drive can be unloaded remotely.

Damn. Should have patented that.

Check the link provided.

Basically, pry the flash board out of its case, open the appropriate head of the cord, cut the wires and take out everything except the plug, insulate the board and stick it in, then glue the head back together and saw the cord off.

You get the idea.

(Note: There's some really interesting stuff on that site--I also have an urge to make a Lego stick, as well.)

sad, sad.

That is very funny. I'm gonna make one for work.

Trust, long-established purveyer of last year's geekery, now have one of those ultra-small Bluetooth adaptors in their range.

Make a dummy cable, with no actual electrical connection, but Bluetooth at each end.

Connect two computers. While exchanging files, chop through the cable with an axe.

Now that's a fault-tolerant connection.

Just solder an antenna-looking thing onto onto each end of the cable and you could say to the sucker:"Gee I wonder what range it has" and get him/her to walk a few hundred metres away to test it.

My friend's dog ate half of his USB stick a few months ago. Most of the circuit board (which was made visible) was still present, but unfortunately the drive no longer functioned.

I suppose if you can get one of these for cheap you can convince your friends that your 5 year old USB 1.1 PC actually connects to "Wireless USB" devices.

And assuming that you're a bit of a BOFH...

Take one of those 14/21/24/41/-in-one USB memorycard readers, gut it and place a USB memorystick inside it.

Make certain that it contains the boss' Pr0n-collection and an autorun.inf file...

Leave it next to the PC in a conference room...

"Leave it next to the PC in a conference room..."

and collect your coat/clear your desk on the way out!

Next step insert a wireless dongle into the fob for true data transfer with the torn cable still connected

"Sawn" surely?

Although looking it up, reveals that the Americans have obliterated yet another chunk of our language.

We might as well communicate with fucking grunts.

How about putting a 13 amp plug on the other end?

Just in case anybody is daft enough actually to plug this thing in, don't actually wire the USB cable to anything, but connect a 4.7k ohm resistor between live and earth. This should trip the ELCB before the resistor melts (it will be dissipating about 11 watts for a brief instant) and cause instant unpopularity.

I knew a bloke who could charge up a piece of coaxial cable. Don't know how he did it, but he would present you with a cable, about 1m in length, with bare twisted conducters visible at each end. "Go on, hold each end of this" he would say, with a gleam in his eye. "WTF, how is a stoopid bit of cable, unattached to any visible source, going to hurt me?" the recipeint would ponder. Then, **BELT** Zapf, **kerpow**, you recieved a healthy kick, which left you scratching your head, lots :-)

I think he held tight to one of the conducters (outer sleeve maybe) and had somehow charged himself up!, thus discharging when somebody else connected (dunno really).

awesome - that site is gonna keep me occupied all weekend long - brilliant!!

Ah the coax capacitor not done that in years... hehe

It's a cable, so as others have said, should have been WIFI. Because transfer is for cables!

From the headline I first thought it was some kind of physical attack vector, either hosting a virus or a capacitor or something.

Sounds like he sneaked a capacitor or few into the cable. I remember a similar thing from physics experiments at school - three elements, a D battery, a capacitor, and you (in parallel to the cap) holding the bulldog clips. Touch the clips to the sides of the battery, don't feel anything, cap charges up. Break the circuit with the battery... zap! Discharge.

Though you do need a fairly large capacitor to get a good zap, so still a bit weird that he got it working in the cable, unless he went to a lot of effort with little caps in parallel...

> What about a nice walkthrough on making a that USB weirdity?

You need a walkthrough to cut a piece of wire?

I can see now why people buy bumper stickers and this kind of novelty item, I guess every time you see the same joke it's new, eh? :)

into a Sinclair ZX81. Although not pocket friendly, it would be a cool looking memory device.

...and if you get a Crucial GIZMO stick there's 4GB of storage. I'll be knocking one of those up when the bits arrive!

no the cable is the capacitor, the outer braid has a large surface area to store electrons on hence has its own capacitence, it is perfectly capable of delivering a substantial shock especailly as coax can hold upto several KV you just need a good HT source to charge it say the back of a crt monitor... good old tech...

But there was absolutely no sign of other wires, batteries or capacitors - just this standard 6mm x 1m coaxial cable. Could he have charged himself, like a human capacitor ?

For someone with the know-how and the parts, there's plenty of room for a few capacitors inside a 1m coaxial cable. Of course, feeding a bunch of tiny capacitors connected in parallel into the cable would be quite frustrating for most people, so I'm suspecting that there were just a couple; one in either end (where you have that nice, big metal fitting one could hide them in).

People *can* charge themselves; otherwise, you wouldn't get that shocking affect when moving around wearing fluffy sweaters in a reasonably dry environment, and then touching something metal. However, he'd feel the zap also - it's just as unpleasant to have the charge leave you suddenly as it is to get it suddenly. Furthermore, people don't make really good capacitors - too many opportunities for discharge, and if you try pushing it too far, you can have other problems, also...

More mods which can realistically be done at home...

http://metku.net/index.html?sect=mods

Smart people, those Finns.

I agree someone should sell these - they are fun!