[bigiain]

If you aren't 100% sure of the providence of your usb stick, you can't really rely on it for _anything_ – have you seen Travis Goodspeed's "Writing a Thumbdrive from Scratch" presentation?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8Im0_KUEf8

[jevinskie]

Indeed! An intelligent "USB Device" is what was used to originally jailbreak the PS3. [0] A USB device (commonly using an AVR USB microcontroller) sends differing USB descriptors at different times - a sort of double-fetch vulnerability. The exploit leads to complete hypervisor access. Do NOT trust your USB device!

[0]: http://ps3wiki.lan.st/index.php?title=PSJailbreak_Exploit_Re...