Imagine walking down the street and finding what appears to be a thumb drive, or arriving home, opening the mailbox and finding a padded envelope with a thumb drive inside, and you don’t know its origin or sender. NEVER connect it to your PC to see what’s inside, as it could be the usb killer which could literally destroy your PC.
It is not very common to fall into one of the situations we have just described, but you can believe us that it happens, otherwise we would not talk about it. USB Killers became famous some time ago for being able to destroy a computer simply by plugging them into a USB port, and in recent weeks it seems their use has proliferated again.
What is a USB Killer and how does it work?
The famous “USB Killer” is a USB key that has been modified to generate an electrical surge that can damage or even destroy the hardware to which it is connected. This unit basically commands the PC’s capacitors to charge and discharge rapidly repeatedly, which will overload the hardware and eventually destroy it physically.
Essentially, a USB Killer works by supplying around 220 volts to an interface designed for 5V. Overcharging will not only destroy the USB port you plug it into, but also the connected hardware, starting of course with the computer’s motherboard. The concept of this device is quite similar to that of Ethernet Killera network cable that supplied power and did much the same thing.
Worst of all, these USB Killers are sold commercially under the name “Kill USBsupposedly for “testing”, since the original concept of this device was to help hardware manufacturers and system administrators determine a device’s ability to withstand electrical surges and electrostatic discharge. However, since its invention, this type of unit has not been used precisely for this, but rather for malicious users who intend to cause harm to other people (in this case, the harm is that your PC crashes).
So that you can see what it is capable of, we leave you a demonstration video with several real experiences.
As you can see this USB killer is capable of destroying desktop computers, laptops, cell phones, televisions, consoles and even a car’s electrical circuit, so of course the damage it can cause are considerable.
How to protect yourself from these dangerous devices?
The first thing is that you need to be able to recognize these devices with the naked eye. USB drives nowadays are quite small, even high capacity ones, yet Killer USB drives are quite large (the image we put above is an actual image of the device). However, you might find it tucked away with a plastic casing of some sort, so in short the first thing you need to be wary of is its size, although admittedly the latest revisions of this device are already quite small.
For this reason, what should prevail is your common sense, and as we told you at the beginning, be careful and never connect a USB key that you find on the street or in your mailbox to your PC, because there is a high probability that you will find malicious content in it in the best case, or it is a USB killer intended to damage your devices in the worst case.
Protect yourself, you won’t be able to protect yourself from it: if you connect it to your PC or any other device, you can say goodbye to it.
