Security researcher Nicholas Starke found the lyrics to a popular Coldplay song in the firmware of a Kingston SSD controller. The discovery was made while Starke was conducting a research project on the firmware. The ZIP file available on the official Kingston support site contained more than just the firmware for the SSD itself, including the special firmware version S2681103, which was released in January 2020 to improve the performance and security of storage hardware. Starke, who had never encountered anything like this before, was surprised to find the lyrics in the .bin file. It is unclear if the hidden text serves some functional purpose or is just a joke of the company’s developers. Kingston representatives did not respond to Bleeping Computer when asked for comment.
