I read an article about how a dude in the subway fished out a USB flash drive from the outer pocket of some guy’s bag. The USB drive had “128” written on it. He came home, inserted it into his laptop and burnt half of it down. He wrote “129” on the USB drive and now has it in the outer pocket of his bag…

After circulating on the Internet for quite some time, the story about the USB flash drive which can burn a computers hardware inspired the realization of one of the worst USB scenarios. Russian hacker Dark Purple has designed a seemingly standard flash drive, which can burn the USB controller and motherboard of a computer. Although originally the USB killer has not been designed as open source, the story soon became very popular on the Internet. This USB killer is the improved version of the original project. As the result of the exhibition named Objects of Dangerous Intentions*, the project does not originate in an open source scheme. It rather relies on a semi-fictional narrative collectively distributed over the Internet. Continuing as a manifestation of the urban legend, it speculates about near future of open source and authorship, which are both constrained by the rigid legal regulations. When we reach this point, the networked collective fiction becomes the only free form of design, regardless of potential dangers and possible outcomes.

* Damir Prizmić, Nikola Bojić, Objects of Dangerous Intentions, Croatian Designers Association gallery, Zagreb, 2016.