Great answer. Not an expert but I would also feel better if the hardware device was not connected to any network when the drive is inserted. For sure not the Internet.

kepford

That seems plausible to me, too -- any actual EEs care to weigh in if one of those weaponized electrical charge USB sticks would still kill your computer through a hub?

Hmm, not an electrical engineer but maybe a USB hub? The capacitor thing seems far less likely than normie who's machine is silently infecting peripherals.

OriginalSize

The worry for this is if it's a device that poses a physical attack via a capacitor or something -- you've probably seen the videos of how they actually fry the circuity of the computer you plug them into.

elvismercury

security

How to plug in a 'strange' USB device?

Boot up the latest Tails and open from there. Copy and paste desired files from dirty drive to clean one.

If you're super-paranoid repeat with a different OS with different hardware (like OpenBSD on a Raspberry Pi) to copy from clean drive to a new, even cleaner one.