It is not easy to kill something via USB as the plugs deal with all sorts of devices that are off spec but it can be done. If you short ground and power the plug disables itself, TVS diodes prevent static electricity from damaging anything and excessive RF is bled off by the inline filtering beads. That didn't stop this Hack a Day reader from figuring out a way to make a killer USB drive with a inverting DC-DC converter and capacitor bank. The drive uses the power provided by the USB port to charge the capacitors to -110VDC which then discharges that to the data pins, enough to overcome the protection on the port and it repeats until the USB port is no longer capable of delivering power. Considering many USB ports are integrated onto your CPU at this point, this is not a very nice thing to do; we present this as a warning and do not recommend this or similar projects be undertaken by our readers.
"[Dark Purple] recently heard a story about how someone stole a flash drive from a passenger on the subway. The thief plugged the flash drive into his computer and discovered that instead of containing any valuable data, it completely fried his computer. The fake flash drive apparently contained circuitry designed to break whatever computer it was plugged into."
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I am totally making one of
I am totally making one of these. Need to keep it safely segregated from the other keys, though. Yikes.
“Honey, I was looking for the photos from our trip so I tried all of the USB drives on your keyring and now my computer won’t boot. It made this funny smell….”
So now the USB
So now the USB port/electrical standard is going to have to be changed, to defeat this hardware/hijack hack against the TVS diodes line of defense. I’ll bet the TSA, as mentioned by one of the commentard’s posts to Hack a Day, already has an adapter to insure their systems do not get fried, same for any other Government/Law enforcement agency. Hopefully most folks are aware that it’s not a good idea to plug any found/unknown USB hardware into a laptop, there are too many risks involved with flash drives, and malware injection, let alone hardware frying hacks out there in the wild.
Oh look Vern! I founds me this here USB thumb drive, ain’t I a lucky ducky! ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZAAAAAAAPPPPPPP! Crackle, and POP!
That person should start
That person should start selling them for cheap (I would build one but it would be too large with just perfboard.
There are lots of thieves at my college
I would like one that combines a standard flash drive with a micro controller that activates the kill switch. I want one where it will work like the first 5 times, then kill the system. this will help with cases where the user steals your flash drive in the college,, then uses it on one of the public systems to see if it works, then takes it home. We need it to get to that point before killing the system.
i commend the genius of the
i commend the genius of the individual- oh wait it was a homeland security drive stolen off of one a our agents…..
curses- foiled again
foil beanie firmly back on…..
Wow, someone was thinking
Wow, someone was thinking hard with this. Any ideas what would be the reason to make this? Faster then DBAN, but this doesn’t damage the HHD right just the power circuitry?
What is the best way that you can think of to check a flash drive for this? Would a USB hub have built in power isolation circuitry, that way only the hub would be fried and not the PC? Should be able to set up some sort of inline circuit checker that lights a led if the data pins go too high and it shuts off the power let you know that this is a USB of mass destruction.
It is meant to physically
It is meant to physically damage motherboard and CPU along with that USB port, he designed it because of an urban legend he had overheard.
You would have to pop open the shell of the drive, it will be visually obvious that something isn't right with the drive.