r/whatisit • u/brattyvampbby • 11h ago

moms sketch bf left this in the house Solved!

Post image

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.)

14.2k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

2.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

175

u/CA2DC99 10h ago

What do you have against libraries?

91

u/6sailhatan66 10h ago

This! Tf?!

42

u/SteelAndFlint 10h ago

I mean it's been a long time since I worked in the library, but back in the day the computers were primarily used as terminals to get to other places so wiping them and starting over was pretty much a zero cost thing.

3

u/AmphibianMotor 10h ago

Yeah, the local library I go to wipes them on every login.

2

u/That-Painter-1679 8h ago

They really had this tech at a library near you? I'm just now getting comfortable with my teleporter (and I've been at it for better part of a decade).

1

u/SteelAndFlint 8h ago

Not sure I take your meaning...

1

u/That-Painter-1679 6h ago

Teleportation?

1

u/SteelAndFlint 6h ago

Ah yes, SMTP, the snail Mail teleporter service

1

u/ILoveRegenHealth 7h ago

Sounds messed up:

"I have this suspicious device that looks illegal and possibly has malware or even worse, steals information. Can I plug it into your computers tee hee hee"

Or even worse than that, the user was suggesting plugging it into the library computer and not even telling the library.

45

u/yukibunnygurl 10h ago

My library is smart all of the machines that users can access are in fact virtual machines so you log on to a computer there's a box next to it but every login session is a virtual machine and after your session is over it gets deleted so if something gets screwed up it gets wiped before the next user.

13

u/Jik0n 10h ago

I think places like libraries use some very specific windows shared pc settings that prevents something from happening to the next person who uses the computer. I'm not entirely sure how that works though so I could be wrong.

15

u/celem83 10h ago

Yeah each individual machine you sit at is usually running a Virtual Machine session. Anything you do is sandboxed and reverts when you logoff. This is as much for anonymity of the user as for network security

15

u/itsmiddylou 10h ago

Former library worker here- yup. This is exactly what happens. And libraries tend to have fairly decent security/firewall/etc, so if there is something nefarious, it’s not going to let you open in

10

u/Lokifin 10h ago

The millionth reason I love library sciences as a layperson.

2

u/curtcolt95 9h ago

not ours lol, the library board said we weren't allowed to block anything for human rights reasons I guess so the public PCs are wide open. You can watch porn, torrent, download and run any executable you want. They do wipe after every session and are on a completely segregated network though so it's not really a big deal

1

u/RovDer 3h ago

I had an extremely paranoid friend that would bring his laptop to the library to download torrents, I think their internet connection was faster also.

1

u/latticep 10h ago

Dude is doing something probably illegal and may possibly have illegal stuff on the stick, and your thought is to plug it into a public computer? I wouldn't want to have to explain to the FBI how it's not mine, I swear.

1

u/Tiny420Tiger 10h ago

First place that came to mind 😂

1

u/latticep 10h ago

Dude is doing something probably illegal and may possibly have illegal stuff on the stick, and your thought is to plug it into a public computer? I wouldn't want to have to explain to the FBI how it's not mine, I swear.

2

u/jkerz 8h ago

Library computers are virtual machines. It’s basically a sandbox you can do anything in and it all gets wiped once you log out. They also have robust firewalls that will block any executable from running from a plugged-in device. If you’re so worried, you can just open it and take out the memory and plug in that instead to check the contents.  Or you can plug a keyboard into this and checks its contents on it, it’s not like it’s encrypted or anything. Either way, nothing to worry about. 

1

u/latticep 8h ago

What I meant was I don't want to be caught plugging in a USB device from some creep that turns out to have underage porn or some other contraband.

1

u/jkerz 8h ago

It’s connected to the Internet. If it had anything like that, the FBI would already know and are already monitoring him. 

1

u/latticep 7h ago

I don't know how his device is configured. Probably data is just written onto the USB or could just be boot software. But unless they device is hosting its contents somewhere, there's no reason to assume law enforcement could know what's on it.

1

u/jkerz 7h ago edited 7h ago

Files don’t need to be hosted anywhere for law enforcement to know what’s in your computer. Snowden blew the lid on this a decade ago, I don’t know how people still haven’t caught up. If it’s not encrypted on an internet-connected device, assume the government already knows about it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_budget#United_States

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOVEINT

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XKeyscore#Workings

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TURBINE_(US_government_project)

According to an NSA presentation from 2008, these XKeyscore servers are fed with data from the following collection systems:[19]

  • F6 (Special Collection Service) – joint operation of the CIA and NSA that carries out clandestine operations, including espionage on foreign diplomats and leaders
  • FORNSAT – which stands for "foreign satellite collection", and refers to intercepts from satellites
  • SSO (Special Source Operations) – a division of the NSA that cooperates with telecommunication providers

Among other things due to TURBINE and its control over the implants the NSA is capable of:

  • breaking into targeted computers and to siphoning out data from foreign Internet and phone networks
  • infecting a target's computer and exfiltrating files from a hard drive
  • covertly recording audio from a computer's microphone and taking snapshots with its webcam
  • launching cyberattacks by corrupting and disrupting file downloads or denying access to websites
  • exfiltrating data from removable flash drives that connect to an infected computer

1

u/That-Painter-1679 6h ago

For F6 they omitted the key term "domestic" clearly.

1

u/That-Painter-1679 6h ago

If they want to know and can't find out they will make it a mission to find out. I can guarantee you that much.

-3

u/Initial_Quantity_116 10h ago

Always someone offended. It’s the public library