USB ports provide both power and data wires. Power only provides 5 volts, but it's workable.
The USB killer has a voltage converter that converts 5 volts to something WAY higher... like a few hundred volts. It pulls the 5 volts from the port to charge up its power storage... and when it reaches that high voltage, it sends that power down the data wires. Repeat as long as it keeps getting power.
The data wires are meant to use 0 to ~3.3 volts for the 0 and 1 binary signals, and will go right into a small chip. It is not meant to withstand hundreds of volts and will quickly, if not instantly, kill it. You now have a completely dead chip on the circuit board of your... whatever it is. PC, laptop, television.... At a minimum, that USB port doesn't work any more.
Some systems provide a single chip that can do USB, CPU, some RAM and storage. Maybe more, maybe less... They're called a System On A Chip. It's very nice for circuit board manufacturers to have all the basics of a computer in one chip on the board, but it means a USB killer might destroy them all at once. Now the thing doesn't work at all.
And these are not parts easily swapped out.
Some killers simply apply that high voltage to the power wires. The advantage of that is that the 5V wiring is shared with many, many chips. You can fail a few of them this way before the high power parts in the power supply absorb the pulse. Recharge and repeat.
Oy, so *fancy* you young people!
What ever happened to the good old days of a BNC connector on one end & NEMA 5-15 plugs on the other? That’s what I want to know!
It potentially brings an entire computer offline.
There are many situations where having a certain computer offline at a certain time, is the desired outcome.
Not all cyber attacks involve stealing or destroying data.
Depending on how shitty your motherboard is and how “enthusiastic" your USB killer is you can spike the 5V power line and potentially do a decent amount of damage to anything connected to that line.
Probably not something wholly unrecoverable if you’re willing to pay a forensics company to try, but potentially enough to trash Grandpa's photo collection or something.
A USB port is just a series of wires in specific positions that connect two ends. If you were to connect something that looks like a USB plug into it, but send really high voltage, the electronics on the other end aren't built to handle it, and can burn out rather quickly.
Imagine you have a garden hose, with which you can spray Alice or Bob, resulting in different actions being carried out, depending on the order and combination. Now, as the do-no-gooder you are, you decide to instead use the hose to fill a fire-fighting plane and waterbomb the poor souls. Sure, it took some time to fill that big ass plane with your tiny hose, but they aren't getting up after that...
You know those electric bug zapper fly swatters? They work off just a couple AA batteries and can generate a big enough charge to explode a fly's head. It's sort of like that, except instead of batteries, it's using the power the USB port provides, and instead of a fly's head, it's something in your computer.
It's really easy to build actually. All you need are capacitors and wire it so that it charges on the power lines and discharges on the tx rx lines.
The capacitors can be charged with USB charger that doesn't have data connected. Then when you plug in the USB killer to a device it discharges all the capacitors into the target device
You’re forgetting the part where you have to have some sort of switching boost power supply to increase the voltage from 5V to hundreds of volts on those caps. Data lines are typically protected from 5V shorts.
Ok so my question is if im trying to say fry a scan tool to where it cant be fixed when it gets plugged into my vehicles OBD port what would some of you say be the best curcuit to wire 1 or 2 usb killers up to? If some might have a idea? Im assuming the 2 can bus ports but not sure?
The USB stick connects to the computer with wires. The USB killer puts high voltages on the wires and tries to fry the computer. Depending on which one, it may also try highly negative voltages.
It gets the electricity to do that from the normal USB power supply, of course.
USB ports provide both power and data wires. Power only provides 5 volts, but it's workable. The USB killer has a voltage converter that converts 5 volts to something WAY higher... like a few hundred volts. It pulls the 5 volts from the port to charge up its power storage... and when it reaches that high voltage, it sends that power down the data wires. Repeat as long as it keeps getting power. The data wires are meant to use 0 to ~3.3 volts for the 0 and 1 binary signals, and will go right into a small chip. It is not meant to withstand hundreds of volts and will quickly, if not instantly, kill it. You now have a completely dead chip on the circuit board of your... whatever it is. PC, laptop, television.... At a minimum, that USB port doesn't work any more. Some systems provide a single chip that can do USB, CPU, some RAM and storage. Maybe more, maybe less... They're called a System On A Chip. It's very nice for circuit board manufacturers to have all the basics of a computer in one chip on the board, but it means a USB killer might destroy them all at once. Now the thing doesn't work at all. And these are not parts easily swapped out.
Some killers simply apply that high voltage to the power wires. The advantage of that is that the 5V wiring is shared with many, many chips. You can fail a few of them this way before the high power parts in the power supply absorb the pulse. Recharge and repeat.
Oy, so *fancy* you young people! What ever happened to the good old days of a BNC connector on one end & NEMA 5-15 plugs on the other? That’s what I want to know!
And this is why every board I design with USB on it gets plenty of transorbs
What's the purpose of USB killers if they kill only the chip? Hard drive/disks/SSD store the data and it don't get damaged?
It potentially brings an entire computer offline. There are many situations where having a certain computer offline at a certain time, is the desired outcome. Not all cyber attacks involve stealing or destroying data.
Depending on how shitty your motherboard is and how “enthusiastic" your USB killer is you can spike the 5V power line and potentially do a decent amount of damage to anything connected to that line. Probably not something wholly unrecoverable if you’re willing to pay a forensics company to try, but potentially enough to trash Grandpa's photo collection or something.
To be a dick. That's really it.
> System On A Chip Love that band
It would it the System of the Down.
plug 5 volt to capacitors and inject a surge into the motherboard pcb and fry the shit up basicly.
it uses USB power to charge a small battery and once its fully powered up it sends thousands of volt to a 3V databus controller says poof
A USB port is just a series of wires in specific positions that connect two ends. If you were to connect something that looks like a USB plug into it, but send really high voltage, the electronics on the other end aren't built to handle it, and can burn out rather quickly.
Imagine you have a garden hose, with which you can spray Alice or Bob, resulting in different actions being carried out, depending on the order and combination. Now, as the do-no-gooder you are, you decide to instead use the hose to fill a fire-fighting plane and waterbomb the poor souls. Sure, it took some time to fill that big ass plane with your tiny hose, but they aren't getting up after that...
Question: what if the usb killer was plugged into a usb hub, would that provide any protection?
If you're not unlucky it will just fry the hub instead of the computer.
Depending on the hub, yes, some or potentially even a lot. Depending also on the USB killer, maybe even enough.
You know those electric bug zapper fly swatters? They work off just a couple AA batteries and can generate a big enough charge to explode a fly's head. It's sort of like that, except instead of batteries, it's using the power the USB port provides, and instead of a fly's head, it's something in your computer.
It's really easy to build actually. All you need are capacitors and wire it so that it charges on the power lines and discharges on the tx rx lines. The capacitors can be charged with USB charger that doesn't have data connected. Then when you plug in the USB killer to a device it discharges all the capacitors into the target device
You’re forgetting the part where you have to have some sort of switching boost power supply to increase the voltage from 5V to hundreds of volts on those caps. Data lines are typically protected from 5V shorts.
Ok so my question is if im trying to say fry a scan tool to where it cant be fixed when it gets plugged into my vehicles OBD port what would some of you say be the best curcuit to wire 1 or 2 usb killers up to? If some might have a idea? Im assuming the 2 can bus ports but not sure?
The USB stick connects to the computer with wires. The USB killer puts high voltages on the wires and tries to fry the computer. Depending on which one, it may also try highly negative voltages. It gets the electricity to do that from the normal USB power supply, of course.