Kingston SSD firmware hides a Coldplay Easter egg

Solid-state storage is a pretty straightforward affair, not really lending itself to levity or fun. So can you blame someone deep in the software division of Kingston for expressing their taste in the form of…firmware notes? One user was shocked to find song lyrics from the 2002 Coldplay song The Scientist in one of the .bin files in Kingston controller firmware.

Nicholas Starke spotted the song lyrics while digging through generic drivers for Kingston drivers from 2020, and showed off his findings to Bleeping Computer. Sure enough, the lyrical string is right there in the SKC2000_S2681103.bin file, publicly available on Kingston’s support download site. It’s possible Windows automatically downloaded a version of the file to your PC as part of Windows Update.

The lyrics are hiding in the notation of the code, not actually affecting anything. Notation is basically the equivalent of a page margin, and it’s frequently used by programmers to relay relevant information about specific functions or adjustments. But it’s not unheard of for programmers to leave Easter eggs in there. Who left the lyrics in the file and why, I couldn’t guess — though now that I look at it, the Kingston “Head” logo isn’t totally dissimilar to the album cover for A Rush of Blood to the Head.

Maybe there’s a deep, dark, sinister conspiracy going on here. Or maybe someone was just trying to alleviate a little boredom. Either way, Kingston declined to comment.