I had my bbb disconnected for several months. I went to power it on and the DC plug is not powering the device. It will power on off of a USB cable though.
Any ideas? Seems like invisible stalkers must have had the unit swapped out so they could pretend to speak with me, since a serial number sticker appeared on the side I do not remember being there..
I was wanting to avoid USB due to internet over powerline as a security threat (even without a specific modem for this purpose). Remote monitoring providing an "echo" of anything from a non-properly shielded device (shielded specifically for Power over Ethernet and Internet over Power) potentionally could provide system login keys, especially after a longer duration of monitoring a local line.. Especially if the building has a smart meter, since they have generic logins for the entirity of meters, it could possibly provide the necessary interface due to being able to isolate line usage to specific areas to narrow down a search.
They were able to see what was on CRT monitor's from a nearby house during the 1980's, and while I have been retired from the IT field for nearly a decade now, even then there was enough for this to have been a daily reality for some. Line noise would be key, especially if physical access to the meter itself had been achieved, then the main ground (mind you yes, the wire to the ground, but, also the fact smart meters are commonly directly wired from the outside of the house into the main circuit breaker in the garage.) would provide the preliminary site footprint analysis availability for what was inside.
Certainly, the amount of power a usb cable uses for a device like bbb is so small, the chances are very small, except when you think about the power brick and surge protectors commonly used were never designed to insulate for this. Simply knowing the number of key presses during login would limit the time necessary to a few minutes/hour(s) using a standard customized dictionary limited to the number of characters necessary, with the addition of upper/lower case, numbers, and symbols..
What's worse, is most televisions have the ability to have firmware upgraded. Imagine accessing a device using HDMI, which can send and receive audio/video, the concept of being able to use a HDMI channel as a serial port leaves much to be desired. Especially when you consider they all have digital wireless chips of some sort to pick up local channels, they could be reprogrammed for send/receive capabilities, for a new era of mindless windows machines connected to the internet of sorts, being linked together to form entire regions of mesh networking, to provide a launching point to other systems from an "off-grid internet", that would require law enforcement having the old fashion survillence vans every again, while also doing spectrum analysis. Now, while they suddenly do not need a warrant for portions, they also can not do much if anything until after they have confirmed the local existence of such a network, which mind you, a small army of devices like cell phones with cameras, would provide a bit of visual and audio input after the automated detection of a new source of radio wave dispersion would be detected, since simply imagining a visual graph of an areas radio waves showing an alteration due to a new attenna source becoming stationary, a.k.a., radar/sonar through the simple momentary loss of signal anytime a vehicle drove through a make shift booby trap monitoring station, one can imagine the 1980's mentality of certain groups of people, who most likely, would not be uploading information about how every one can easily learn some of these concepts on their local bulletin board system..
So aside from possibly scared any non-government employees that might have read an ex power company employee novices "I read the cliff notes introduction, and decided I was too old to learn new tricks" mostly off subject retirement summary..
Meaning that does anyone know the hardware config well enough, that could guide me through diagnosing attempting to manually disable/enable to dc plug, after the device has been booted for confirmation that it did not magically receive a software update, and is pretending to be bricked when plugged into the little round black port on one of the corners of the board?