The Xenon Death Flash: How a Camera Nearly Killed the Raspberry Pi 2

The bizarre story of how taking flash photos could instantly crash the Raspberry Pi 2, the community detective work that solved it, and why this strange bug revealed fundamental flaws in modern chip design. The Raspberry Pi 2’s vulnerability to xenon flashes became one of the most unusual hardware bugs in computing history. I’ve seen plenty of weird computer bugs in my time, but nothing quite like what Peter Onion discovered in February 2015. He was proudly photographing his brand new Raspberry Pi 2 when something bizarre happened—every time his camera flash went off, his Pi instantly powered down. At first, Peter thought it was just a coincidence. But after it happened three times in a row, he realized he’d stumbled onto something unprecedented. His post to the Raspberry Pi forums with the innocent title “Why is the PI2 camera-shy?” would soon reveal one of the strangest hardware vulnerabilities in modern computing history. The Community Detective Story Begins# Peter Onion wasn’t ... Read full article.