DeadDrops.com. Dead Drops 'How to' - NYC. An excersise in crowd sourced safety. 14 December 2010 | By Sean Lyons Categories: Education, Security, Technology | I came across a post recently linking to a website about USB Dead Drops. In it, artist Adam Bartholl described a series of installations around New York city, which he called USB Dead Drops, named after the cold war era spy trick (Isn’t that right, Chris?).
Adam describes dead drop as; an anonymous, offline, peer to peer file-sharing network in public space. Put simply, he is physically ‘injecting’ usb storage devices into walls, curb stones, any permanently fixed physical structure, and then letting people klnow where they are in the hope that they will be used to share interesting digital ‘things’ between those who know.
Brilliant, I say, I love this stuff. But the interesting part came next. A range of commenters, brought up the potential risk of malware infection on a device such as this. Mr Bartholl does not need to worry about people uploading malicious files. I think this response sum it up. Aram Bartholl. Dead Drop, le P2P « offline » ou Hadopi droit dans le mur. Une initiative nommée « Dead Drop » signé d’un artiste allemand, Aram Bartholl, risque de faire tâche d’huile en ces temps menacés par ACTA et autre HADOPI. Son projet consiste à placer des données numériques sur une clef USB dissimulée et cimentée dans un mur. Par le bouche à oreille ou un site dédié, on peut alors en connaître la localisation et connecter son ordinateur portable. Il suffit alors de transférer des informations, librement, sans contrôle d’une autorité quelconque. Dead Drops est anonyme et hors ligne et permet des échanges de pair à pair avec un maillage en mode « réel » grâce à la démocratisation des clefs USB.
Il y a 5 dead drops à New York pour l’instant C’est très peu, mais le projet vient d’être présenté le 20 octobre dernier à l’EYEBEAM de New York. Il devrait d’ailleurs s’accélérer : le concepteur et artiste va diffuser sous peu une documentation complète, un petit film, des cartes interactives et un manuel pour faire son propre « dead drop ». Dead drop. A dead drop or dead letter box is a method of espionage tradecraft used to pass items between two individuals using a secret location and thus does not require them to meet directly. Using a dead drop permits a case officer and agent to exchange objects and information while maintaining operational security. The method stands in contrast to the live drop, so called because two persons meet to exchange items or information. Overview[edit] Spies (covert intelligence agents) and their handlers have been known to perform dead drops using various techniques to hide items (such as money, secrets or instructions), and to signal that the drop has been made.
Although the signal and location by necessity must be agreed upon in advance, the signal may or may not be located close to the dead drop itself, and the operatives may not necessarily know one another, or ever meet. Dead drop spike The dead drop spike is a concealment device similar to a microcache. Modern techniques[edit] See also[edit]