Much ado about nothing.
If you can plug this in you already have physical access.
Your security is already defeated.
No fancy devices required.

Too expensive. I am waiting another few months for a $100 Chinese ripoff.

@indio007
How about selling it to companies and let them smuggle it into their offices like a Trojan horse.

Much ado about nothing.
If you can plug this in you already have physical access.
Your security is already defeated.
No fancy devices required.

I'm sure if you sent 5 of these to a bank or other place, someone would plug them in. Even tout them as some new fancy anti-hackable power strip, put some material in the box stating that fact and your company is offering their bank a free sample to try and I bet someone plugs them in.

linux 2.6? wow do you guys live in the dark ages or something?

$1295 for the equivalent of something I could build esentially for free on an old piece of hardware or in a VM? No thanks. Use BackTrack and you will get many more tools, plus it already comes wrapped up in a VM if you desire. And you get a custom 3.2.6 kernel, which is still not quite current, but definitely better than 2.6.

ordinary power strips don't have ethernet or usb ports and i can't tell what the last one is but that wouldn't be present on ordinary power strips either, not only that but whats with the huge bulk? if it doesn't proclaim to have a feature that needs such space then its obviously going to gain suspicion.

even without the article telling i would find this thing odd

That's a USB console port like you would find on a switch.

ordinary power strips don't have ethernet or usb ports and i can't tell what the last one is but that wouldn't be present on ordinary power strips either, not only that but whats with the huge bulk? if it doesn't proclaim to have a feature that needs such space then its obviously going to gain suspicion.

even without the article telling i would find this thing odd

That's a USB console port like you would find on a switch.

'switch' is a bit vague for example i wouldn't expect to find a usb port on a light switch, and which do you mean by 'that' the usb port i mentioned or the unknown port i mentioned?

I'm talking about the unknown port being a console port. I thought it would be obvious since I quoted your question??? And how could it not be clear that I am talking about network switching? It's pretty obvious you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. I'm not trying to be a dick, but get a clue.

Clearly, it can be used for intra-corporate hacking?? I mean, it is DARPA funded so it cant be that shady. But still, I wonder about the abuse potential on such a product.

If you can plug this in you already have physical access.

It's for security testing. Not for actual penetration (though I suppose you could abuse it for that).
It's used to simulate an attack from the outside on your unsecured WiFi/Bluetooth/Ethernet.

Pwnie Express will not let Power Pwn get in the wrong hands--it would be sued into bankrupcy. I bet Pwnie Express has put in a backdoor communication channel that lets it check the location and use of each one. And as for Chinese copies--that is an opportunity for Pwnie Express to create and sell further devices and services to detect them--after all it will be in the best position to know how to do that.

Probably not too difficult to build something that would fit inside the case of one of those generic, inexpensive switches. Custom programmed FPGA, a small processor with embedded linux, voila - a drop-in replacement.
Might be possible to detect incursions like this by measuring the characteristics (electrical, as a transmission line) of the cable, and detecting when they change.

They should provide a GFCI model for that kind of money.