Now that sounds like the most sensible explanation I've heard so far!

Indeed. It might well be possible to get hold of the architectural plans for an airport, and/or to construct them using AutoCAD® or other drawing tools. Scanning paper documents in some archive might be even easier. And then, the part about "the path that the Queen takes to the airport" sounds much too tantalizing to actually be real. (How long has it been since the Queen, who is now very advanced in years, has ever been to the airport?)

People who are not paying attention might be very predisposed to believe what they want – especially if it smells like a "scoop." Of course security officials would take it seriously and would carefully investigate it, thereby perhaps giving more credibility to what is actually a prank.

(I say, "a prank," but of course this is a crime.)

Indeed. And the Mirror has concocted crap before and been complicit in the phone hacking scandal which exposed the misdeeds of a few of the major "red top" tabloids a few years ago - one of which was shut down entirely.

Mirror is a pseudo-leftist appealing, but ultimately populist, tabloid rag. It doesn't surprise me that they would again stoop to gutter journalism such as this.

Sounds " Arcane " to me, fo shore.

As far as free usb sticks on the ground. dd it. It is now mine. Example: From a junked Kodak camera.

https://forums.solydxk.com/viewtopic.php?t=1858

Unfortunate that anything laying on the ground does not stay long on the ground on the Mexican border. ;)
I guess there is a plethora of usb gear laying on the ground across the pond.

Did you mean UXB?? ;)

Unfortunately that's a potentially dangerous thing to do. I did it once and got a real dressing down from some of the people here. Apparently a usb drive is not really a disk at all. It appears to be a disk by virtue of the special firmware inside. When you dd, you clear this virtual disk but not the firmware itself. And that firmware can be malevolent. Google for usb drive malware and you'll find plenty.

I never listen to other people's hypothetical sky is falling scenarios. Some may consider that a fault.

I don't. Being chicken little and being a biker don't mix well. It keeps you from leaning into turns.

Search the web for "BadUSB".

Leaving tantalising memory sticks around for people to pick up, format and reuse actually seems a good strategy.

Really?? Well that's blown your chances of getting a job in any company that checks your security risk.

haha... oh well...

(burn-it.co.uk seems to be down)

That is because it is only an email address not a web site (any more).

Can I send you an email? :p

Might be better to post a memory stick or something similar.

https://web.archive.org/web/20070219...n-it.co.uk:80/
(Not so easy to lose in the street)

I usually reformat my USB drives with an EXT4 filesystem. That's the next best thing to encryption.

I know there are ways to access EXT filesystems in Windows, but very few Windows users would even imagine that it might have a different format. They will invariably assume it's corrupted or dead.