The ol’booby-trapped-USB-trick just got a huge upgrade that does more than infect your computer with malevolent viruses; instead, it delivers a negative 220-volt electric surge that fries your laptop’s expensive inwards, teaching you a valuable lesson in bringing home stray USB sticks.
Fancifully dubbed the “USB Killer version 2.0,” the device uses a DC-to-DC converter to charge hidden capacitors (from the USB port that it’s attached to) and then re-directs that power into the computer, causing the process to loop indefinitely until the circuitry fails.
Judging from the video below, the targeted computer —in this case an IBM Thinkpad— immediately short-circuited within a few seconds of coupling with the thumb drive. To the onlooker, this appears as if the computer suddenly shut down, but in actuality, its USB port and motherboard were fried; at least the voltage was not enough to destroy the hard drive along with all the data it stores.
The innocuous-looking monstrosity was designed by a Russian security researcher nicknamed “Dark Purple,” who previously created the weaker original USB Killer, which supplied a less threatening 100-volts. And technically speaking, the USB Killers are not just threatening to computers/laptops, but to anything equipped with a USB port. Just imagine what sort of damage could be unleashed if one plugs in the USB Killer into their expensive digital camera.
Nonetheless, not all USB-related hacks are so dastardly. Earlier this year I wrote about a script that you save into the USB that’ll turn it into a computer kill switch, forcing an immediate shutdown upon removal.
Source: Ars Technica
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