Compact Disc Set To Explode When Inserted

A Turkish Al Qaeda leader has been arrested in Turkey. He was a lawyer and has admitted that he was the leader of Al Qaeda in Turkey. Nine others were also arrested. They found bomb-making materials, a compact disc set to explode when inserted into a computer and a map of an oil refinery.


This is not the actual compact disc...


Nasty compact disc... I wonder how it works. If it explodes inside of a computer it will probably destroy the computer, I guess. It doesn't sound like a good assassination device though. It can't be powerful enough to be of any danger to the people near the computer, or can it?

It would destroy the drive definitely. The computer is likely, the damage to the desk would be minimal and unless a person was using a laptop, I don't see much of a risk to a Human. Might cause a fire and thermal runaway in a Lithium Ion Battery. That could be dangerous. Castratilicious

Here's the only other description I can find in the news sources:

Police seized bomb-making material, including what the agency called a “CD bomb” — a minuscule explosive device placed on a compact disc which would have exploded if played.

MSNBC

It sounds a bit too James Bondish to me, I can't see how this would work

not for sure but having used to work for a coumpany that develops cd's there are cd's that self destruct after 36hours or being played but they don't explode they dissolve kinda. not for sure exactly. they are imprinted with the words "This CD Will Self Destuct After Playing" just a thought

What in the world would set off the explosion? Exposure to laser light?

Castratilicious

Now thats funny!





[edit on 12/9/06 by makeitso]

Have you ever heard of the "exploding" floppy disk? Kids at my old high school used to do it on older machines they brought in from home to freak out the teachers. It made a lot of smoke and some sparks, but it didn't do much more than that. All they used was nail polish and an unnamed ignition material. I assume there is a way to do this with CD/DVD's. The laser does put off quite a bit of heat, especially burners.

[edit on 9-12-2006 by sardion2000]

Originally posted by emtziggy45
not for sure but having used to work for a coumpany that develops cd's there are cd's that self destruct after 36hours or being played but they don't explode they dissolve kinda. not for sure exactly. they are imprinted with the words "This CD Will Self Destuct After Playing" just a thought

These CDs/DVDs have a layer that begins to react with air making it opaque within a day or so after opening it so it becomes unreadable by the laser.

Nothing similar to a terrorist's exploding CD

Bizarre...

I know that 1.44 hard disks can be coated with layers of certain substances (not going to go into it - please nobody ask), set to ignite when the head reads them (friction) - they burn very hot and can destroy the computer into which they are inserted. People have used them as a prank, but they also see use as a means to destroy evidence contained on computers. If you've got one resting in the drive, and someone comes busting in the door, popping the disk in will almost certainly destroy your computer and prevent authorities from extracting information stored there.

A CD though? Even using a very powerful high explosive, a CD is extremely thin. I don't see how it could contain a charge capable of inflicting serious damage at a distance of a foot or more.

I would like to know more about this, because something seems strange. Such a small amount of explosive would be a poor assasination tool. It would be little more than a powerful firecracker, I would think.

Perhaps it was a method for importing explosives under the radar, so to speak? You could probably ship a whole cargo container full of CDs without raising the interest of customs, but that many would provide a substantial amount of bang for your buck.

I mean, some booby traps can function with a very small charge - things like phones with tiny bomblets in the earpiece. It doesn't take a large amount of explosives to do a lot of damage if you hold the thing up to your head.

But a CD?

No, I think it would make much more sense if the CD was a way to get the explosives delivered somewhere undetected.

There would be a relatively easy way to detect it though. Just shine a handheld laser through it. Any "treated" CD/DVD will instantly get flagged due to the changed optics of the media. If you look at a CD or DVD through a bright white light, you can actually see some of the light penetrate it. Such a thing would most likely be made nearly opaque if not completely opaque. Anything less would lower the yield to the point where it would take many times more CDs to smuggle them to their destination.

Well yeah, but what percentage of incoming cargo containers do we inspect thoroughly?

1%?

2%?

I suspect that an inspector opening a crate of CDs would just close it right back up and move on to other business.

Now that this information about the CDs has come out, they might start inspecting shipments of CDs. Even then, I can imagine a scenario involving a mix of real and fake CDs - real on top, fake on the bottom (or in the back). You and I both know there's NO WAY they can inspect every single one of them.

I know we've got equipment that can detect explosive residue/dust, but I doubt if normally it would be employed on a shipment of CDs. Now, after this has come out, maybe they will start checking that sort of shipment with that technology...

I don't know...

My point was, if they are going to use this as a smuggling method, then they are gonna have to send a helluva lot of them in order for it to make any sense whatsoever. The more they send, the easier it will become to detect them through a variety of means. If one crate is found, then you can betcha that all the crates will be checked out.

There are easier methods, like basic household chemistry.

They seem to like to improvise using readily available materials. Perhaps this was originally intended just for the purpose of destroying information and they got him before he could pop it into his computer.

The maps of the oil refinery suggest that they might have planned to strike it somehow. Whether or not they planned to use these cd(s) for this purpose is an open question.

The oil refinery is in the town of Izmir (Smyrna)

Indeed, Sardion, you're probably right. The CD could just have been for the purpose of destroying evidence.

I guess they didn't get a chance to use it.

A government organization like the FBI or CIA could almost assuredly retrieve most information off of a computer hard drive even if it was damaged by a minor explosion, as I would expect from a tiny device on a CD.

I think this must have been just some kind of miscommunication or something...it just doesn't make sense to me personally.

[edit on 12/10/2006 by djohnsto77]

If it was just a flare-up, and only the outer case of the hard drive was damaged, then sure, data can be retrieved. But if the flare-up serves to ignite a hotter mixture, that then burns down and through the HD completely, you'd need a miracle to retrieve the data.

Have you ever observed thermite at work? It's really amazing how hot this stuff burns. Hot enough to burn through an engine block, or the deck of a warship - a HD is child's play by comparison.

If it was used as a fuse for some other explosive or incediary device already built into the the computer, then of course it could work, but IMO it sounds far fetched they'd design a CD with a hidden explosive to do this even if they were capable enough to do it (which I highly doubt). Why not just have a fuse sticking out of it and a BIC lighter nearby?

That's one of the oddest things I've heard in awhile, I've thought
of that kind of thing before, but I did'nt think ti would ever be
made for anything, especially as a tool used by terrorists.


You know I can't help thinking, perhaps this was just a test
one, and there real objective is to destroy computers in the
middle east, since the Internet is the most dangerous thing
to an extremeist belief, may be they wanted to tdestroy
computers so that people could'nt learn the truth.

My guess would be that the CD was intended to destroy the information on the CD it self. If you wanted to erase information from the HD a couple of electromagnets mounted next to the drive would be simpler, quicker and more effective.

My sister does Computer Forensics for a County District Attorney's office. She has told me that they have recovered data from a hard drive that was in a computer destroyed by dynamite. They aquired a good drive of the same make and model and swapped the platters from the damaged drive.

i had a CD explode once... i had to clean about 500 shards of Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2 out of my CD drive, but that was the extent of the damage.

i don't see how a CD would be treated with an incendiary substance, though, at least not any appreciable amount of one. it certainly wouldn't be possible to put enough explosives on or in a CD to deal physical damage to a person using a computer... even if a high explosive or powerful incendiary substance were used, the worst it could do is mess up the drive itself, and maybe (like WyrdeOne said) ignite a secondary thermite device or something... and even that would fail to hurt the user unless they decided to give their PC a hug in response to its belching smoke and fire.

it bugs me that we get so many news stories telling us about all these wacky new weapons the terrorists are thinking up to kill Americans with, when so many of them are quite harmless but played up by sensationalist or paranoid news media.

[edit on 10-12-2006 by The Parallelogram]