More dangerous than malware: a flash drive with explosives injures a journalist in Ecuador

Five journalists of Ecuador have received a usb flash drive which contained a explosive which is activated at insert the flash drive into a PC. This RDX explosive has enough power to cause serious injury to one personif it’s near.

according to account fundamediosfive journalists from Ecuador of the media Ecuavisa, Teleamazonas, Exa FM and TC Televisión received on March 16 some envelopes with a flash drive inside. Some of these envelopes contained written threats, but others contained a message that was hard for a journalist to resist.

In one of them he said: “This information will expose correísmo (a political current in Ecuador). If you think it’s useful, we can come to an agreement and I’ll send you the second part. I communicate with you“.

A flash drive with explosives

Journalist Lenin Artieda introduced the usb flash drive in its pccausing an explosion what caused him minor hand and face injuries.

A police analysis determined that the USB flash drive contained a explosive charge one centimeter in size, RDX military explosivealso called C1 or T4. It only exploded half of the explosive. If it were to explode entirely, the injuries would have been more serious.

In this photo you can see the USB stick with explosives that reached the journalists:

As explained by the Ecuadorian Police, the explosive is activated with an electrical charge of 5 V, which is just the one supplied by the USB port from a computer.

The other journalists did not use the explosive flash drive, suspecting him. One of them did enter it, but not into a computer. Since the device did not provide the 5 volts necessary, the charge did not explode.

At the moment it is not known who is the cause of these attacks. According to the police, all the envelopes came from the same city. It is suspected that they come from some of the drug gangsthat you want to intimidate journalists so that they do not report their activities.

The usb flash drive with explosives they are the latest threat, much more dangerous than malware, or USBs that destroy a computer.