How A Souvenir Started A Panic At The Trump-Kim Summit

Yesterday, Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un met in Singapore to discuss pouring some cold water on their war boners. It was a meeting that ended with Trump promising to cancel the joint military exercises that the U.S. regularly holds with South Korea (which came as a surprise to both South Korea and the Pentagon), while North Korea promised to begin the process of denuclearization (a promise that they've been making since 1985).

Overall, the conference-y of dunces went pretty smoothly. Or so you think.

The summit was also attended by 2,000+ journalists. Upon arrival, they were presented with some complimentary goodies, such as a bottle of water, a guidebook, a trial subscription to the country's biggest newspaper, and a USB fan -- which, as one journalist explained, was a total godsend.

Within hours, cybersecurity experts everywhere were warning the journalists to not, under any circumstances, plug the fan in. Why? Because of this little thing called "hacking!" It's a common tactic amongst cyber criminals and assholes to leave USBs laying around for people to unwittingly plug into secure networks. In 2013, for instance, Russia was able to hack several G20 delegates by handing out "complimentary" pen drives containing malware -- and let's face it, North Korea isn't exactly a novice when it comes to cybercrime.

But it's unclear whether the USBs were ever actually a threat. They weren't provided by North Korea (as you'd expect), but by a branch of the Singapore government, which later issued a statement explaining that the fans were just "a handy and thoughtful gift for the media are simple devices with no storage or processing capabilities." On one hand, that kinda makes us feel like paranoid, ungrateful dicks, but on the other, that's exactly what someone who tried to hack your laptop with shady hardware would say.

The key to solving this mystery, therefore, is to find a journalist who plugged one of the fans into their computer ... but it's not like anyone's going to admit that they were dumb enough to do that now, are they?

Adam Wears is on Twitter and Facebook! He also has a newsletter about depressing history, but that's only for the coolest kids.

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