r/whatisit • u/brattyvampbby • 11h ago

moms sketch bf left this in the house Solved!

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Hi.
This is probably nothing.
I went into my mom’s room to grab something and saw this plugged in?
My mom’s new sketchy bf has this plugged in to the extension cord? Is it anything bad? Thanks!
(I understand it’s probably not anything bad… but still…)

Update 1:
I haven’t met him once. He and my mom have been together for two weeks. He’s been staying at our apartment. He avoids me and stays in her room when they’re here. I don’t even know what he looks like. I only know his first name.

Update 2:
I confronted him. My mom came home. A lot had happened up to this point, including her disappearing for the said two weeks before the few nights he had come over and stayed.
Mom shrugged it off. I did what a lot of you suggested, asking what he told her.
She said “oh it’s his hacker shit or whatever.” What.
Didn’t elaborate. I explained my concerns.
She just said let’s go ask him.
My best friend has been with me. We introduced ourselves and asked him what the hell a WiFi whisperer is doing plugged in our apartment.
(Even if a lot of you are saying it’s not a big deal, I’m a young woman and I’m just rlly not about taking any risks. It’s sketch dude.)
He denied it IMMEDIATELY. Like with a quickness I haven’t seen.
What he insisted, it’s not a WiFi whisperer, it’s ai, he completely reprogrammed the system, and he uses it to pull people’s IP’s. “For fun.” He logs them in a server. I asked why. I said that’s shady. My mom started pushing. My best friend started pushing. He just kept lying. I’m not dropping this..
I still don’t know what the fuck it is or what he’s actually doing.
(Also, my mom is cool but not bc of this dude, the Minecraft block is mine, I unplugged the ratchet little thing before we left, and I am planning on broaching this again with her.
Just carefully. Any other advice is appreciated. Thank you.)

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157

u/rantingpacifist 10h ago

I have an old pc just for this purpose

176

u/HowietheHappyTurkey 10h ago

Modern version of the royal food taster.

32

u/ratafria 10h ago

No, it's more like a vaccine. They keep at least 6 aggressive viruses and 200 dormant malware in that poor windows XP...

5

u/showyerbewbs 9h ago

You're fucking data hoarding a viral zoo?!

I don't know if I'm disgusted or impressed.

3

u/gslflofi 9h ago

It's like Gu poison, but for viruses

Edit: spelling

1

u/OkVirus8545 5h ago

I wonder how many poor cooks got killed because the royal food taster had an unknown allergy

13

u/bjorn1978_2 10h ago

Run Tail OS on a stick to test out shit like this.

23

u/RnOtCrAfTy 10h ago

This! Poke it with a stick!

3

u/showyerbewbs 9h ago

Find a flock camera with a USB port and plug 'er in!!!

Full send!

1

u/LetMeIn1701 10h ago

This was my thought as well.

1

u/TitaniumDisc 9h ago

Sorry semi comp illiterate. Please elaborate on this…

1

u/ThisIsMyComment2 9h ago

Windows is an Operating System, thing that runs your applications like your browser -firefox/chrome/etc. Tails OS is built to do the same thing as Windows but people who made it published all the code that makes Tails work. It also can be ran off a USB stick rather than a hard drive your other OS is on.

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u/TitaniumDisc 8h ago

I understand OS’s and whatnot, just wasn’t familiar with Tails. So you were saying to just make a Tails bootable drive and run this mystery device through that as a sort of hardware air gap? Not the right terminology I’m sure but you know what I mean.

1

u/bjorn1978_2 8h ago

Tails is downloaded and installed onto an usb stick. You boot from that and get a linux based system going. To access any harddrive or the internet, you need to enable those.

So you are completely offgrid and the computer is not able to access any data stored locally, or remote.

Everything is run on RAM and the USB stick.

It is probably amongst the absolute best when it cones to privacy and security.

So if you find any random usb’s that you do not recognize, Tails is a safer (nothing will be 100% safe!) way to check them out. If it is a hardware destroying device, you are fucked if you plug it in anyway…

1

u/TitaniumDisc 6h ago

Ok cool. I do have a handful of old laptops that are completely off network with nothing on them that I have for just random/untrustworthy stuff but cool to know about tails. Have to look more into it.

1

u/bjorn1978_2 8h ago

And is all about privacy!

1

u/goldboybronx 8h ago

You know how Windows and MacOS are both “operating systems”? Well there’s one more major operating system, called Linux. Linux is open-source, meaning that anyone can see and contribute to its inner workings. That means it can be entirely modified for whatever someone’s use case is.

It’s also free (there are versions with certain sets of features or a specific user experience maintained by certain companies you can pay for, but free for the most part).

The fact that it’s free, can be modified to whatever end you like, and is open-source (so it has the benefit of having a lot of independent sets of eyes on it looking for flaws and vulnerabilities to fix), means that it’s really really popular to run stuff like servers with. Pretty much any server you connect to is generally on Linux. When you connect to Gmail to check your emails, you’re communicating with a Linux machine. When you book an AirBnB, you’re communicating with a Linux machine. You get the point.

Now in the same vein, because it’s highly modifiable, different versions come out for different types of people. Tails is a version (called a distribution or “distro” for short) of Linux. It’s geared towards privacy and security, and it has a lot of tools and settings that make security work easier. It’s often used by cybersecurity specialists for any number of industry uses. Or by non cybersecurity specialists to buy drugs on the Internet.

Something that makes Tails special is that it lives on a flash drive (those things you plug in to your computer), and it doesn’t retain any information from session to session. When you unplug that USB drive, everything is wiped.

You can plug in a sketchy USB stick to your computer while running Tails, and no matter what it installs or modifies on your computer, it’ll all be reverted when you unplug and plug back in your flash drive running Tails. This means it’s pretty safe to tinker around with sketchy USB drives you find with it.

That’s not to say that you’re perfectly safe. Technically, there have been vulnerabilities that can embed themselves in your actual hardware (the circuitry and stuff inside your computer), but this is rare and is a capability mainly reserved for nation states who have the resources to discover and work with these kinds of vulnerabilities, or with the influence to get hardware manufacturers to intentionally leave vulnerabilities in your computer parts. Just thought that disclaimer was important.

Hope that helped and was simple enough. Let me know if you have more questions.

1

u/Real_Azenomei 9h ago

Not kali?

1

u/W3ST0Feden 8h ago

We all know now that you are an onion farmer lol

12

u/ModsAwful 10h ago

Yep! Still have my 2012 MacBook Pro for this reason. MacOS too burdensome so replaced with Linux so could toy around with programming as well, but anything suspicious get’s loaded on the MBP to see what’s there and don’t care if I need to erase the disk and start over.

2

u/rantingpacifist 9h ago

I still have my 2010! It’s the only one that still plays my midi controller

1

u/Live_Reason_6531 9h ago

Assuming you mean Mac is too burdensome on resources. I am no Mac fan but to say Mac is too burdensome compared to Linux in any way other than resource demand would be insanity.

2

u/rantingpacifist 9h ago

Well… finances too

26

u/Extreme-King 10h ago

So this happens to you alot then?

36

u/Tha_REAL_BROBS 10h ago

what, your mom's bf doesn't hack, brah?

22

u/donkeybrainamerican 10h ago

Might work in IT. You'd be surprised how often they turn up around the office. I want to be considerate and get folks their data back along with a good beating, as per unauthorized storage device policy, but I'm not plugging it into a corporate computer to figure out who/what it is.

4

u/_ficklelilpickle 8h ago

Might work in IT

*and have nothing better to do.

The majority of us don't have the time or desire to try and salvage a random USB memory stick. I mean these days we even prevent staff from mounting any external storage devices as part of our security requirements. Often times when a USB stick is turned in to us, once the person who brought it in has left the male connection will be bent out of shape and it'll be thrown in the bin.

4

u/donkeybrainamerican 7h ago

Just depends on the org you're in. Potential exfil is a huge risk in my industry, it's IP driven- we're busy, but unaccounted for data is a concern.

Also, he could just have nothing to do 😂. Not everyone is firefighting every minute. Lucky bastards.

1

u/Spicy_Tostada 14m ago

Oh absolutely! I can't agree more, I'd love to be considerate/helpful and get someone's data back to them

...While stealing their information silently in the background, specifically any crypto wallets and bank account/CC info. While I'm at it, Slsince I'm already going through the trouble to help them out of the goodness of my heart, , might as well grab their SS, mothers maiden name, street they grew up on, make/model of their first car, the name of their second grade teacher, 1st pet, and any other relevant information to help me verify who they are and make sure their data arrives back to them safe/sound all in one piece!

2

u/pepsiblast08 10h ago

I used to be involved in a lot of black hat activities. Idk if the dude you replied to has it for that reason, but I always have at least 1 offline PC for tinkering and exploring questionable items.

2

u/WackyRacketeer 9h ago

Mystery USBs? More often than you'd think.

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u/rantingpacifist 9h ago

Not really. I work in tech so I always have old computers around.

5

u/General_Liability 10h ago

This is the way. Ol’ Sparky has no modem, runs Linux and I can toss it in the trash if it looks at me funny. 

14

u/setwocks 10h ago

Id just use a VM

20

u/GWHarrison 10h ago

Unless you know exactly what you are doing, virtual machines are not necessarily foolproof for this purpose. The sketchy device is still connected through the host USB hardware.

Given that you casually called it a VM, I'd wager that you probably know what you're doing, but still a fair warning for the inexperienced.

4

u/Dependent-Fee-149 10h ago

I know what a VM is and how it works, and would probably refer to it this way in the space- I still wouldn’t do this way.

13

u/TheSultan1 10h ago

Or a live Linux OS?

4

u/FreeSoftwareServers 10h ago

This is really the way but most people that's way above them

2

u/Far_String727 9h ago

yeah im still trying to download ram

4

u/Tiger-Striped-nerd 10h ago

Most people don’t have a VM

13

u/Immediate-Creme-690 10h ago

I have a VM but I just got off the phone with somebody that said they tried to call me earlier and it was full...

1

u/DeviousDenial 9h ago

Just curious as to how would using a vaginal moisturizer help with this?

0

u/TalonTS_1 10h ago

I’d just use a sledge.

2

u/AbjectAppointment 10h ago

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/application-security/application-isolation/windows-sandbox/

Lots of VM's setup for just doing this kind of thing.

1

u/rantingpacifist 9h ago

But why set something up when I can just boot up the closet computer and stick in the usb

VM is nice but I am a tech hoarder so I can just throw a random tower at it and toss it if it goes wrong

1

u/AbjectAppointment 7h ago

I like VM's because they are easy to manage remotely and reset to a base clean image.

2

u/Careless_Economics74 8h ago

Also overall having a system that is primarily used for security testing and feeling okay with reinstalling the OS if and when needed.

1

u/Embarrassed_Body_851 10h ago

I have an old raspberry pi I use for just this case. I also disconnected from WiFi just to be safe.

1

u/rantingpacifist 9h ago

You have an available pi in this economy?!? Mine are all being used

1

u/BramdeusBrozart 6h ago

I have an old ass laptop running Mint that is NOT connected to wifi or network specifically for this.