Slashdot Mirror

I have to admit, I laughed pretty hard the first time I saw the picture of the etherkiller. (Several people have made similar cables, usually much less hacky looking, e.g. with matching colored cables.)

I always wondered if some poor bastard ever unwittingly plugged in one of these things that some malicious person left lying around and if so, what happened (and if anyone was ever charged.)

How much damage could of been done with etherkiller?

http://www.fiftythree.org/ethe...

I remember some time back there was a NIC card which had some kind of cpu/ram/etc with it. I think it may have been able to offload torrents or something like that.

One such NIC was the Killer NIC (no, not that one).

Microsoft Research also developed an USB variation of this.

Do we need that kind of things these days and maybe some BSD based guardian to live there to report on any strange stuff being sent or received?
Basically you would have a computer spending full time making sure your computer is secure, or trying to.

That's exactly how Intel ME /AMT and how IPMI (the industry standard equivalent for servers) were sold back then.
The only exception :
  - they were sold to management, not to you the end-user. So ITs could remotely manage your workstation or company servers remotely, even if they are powered down, while keeping you, the user entirely out of the loop.
  - nobody though about software freedoms (freedom to study/modify, etc.) thus you, the end user, end up now with a blob on which you have absolutely zero control, but which could be exploited to remotely hose your machine even if it's powered down.

(At least IPMI can be kept on an entirely separate network port, which will be kept on a separate private network and thus will never get into contact with the internet - thus limiting any potential remote exploit. IntelME is an entirely different can of worms.)

This would make them replace equipment.

The Ethernet Killer is probably worth mentioning, too.

I'm glad all my drives are SATA. They seem to be immune to these threats.

For about 6 bucks

http://www.fiftythree.org/ethe...

The Ethernet Killer is probably worth mentioning, too.

The test equipment wasn't designed to test for mis-wirings like this. Most equipment will fail if you plug in something like this, although the USB cable wasn't that bad, it merely had the power line connected to the wrong pin.

His equipment was a laptop and a dongle designed to sniff the USB port for protocol problems. It wasn't expecting something this bad.

Wrong cable. One of these should take care of the problem.

Here you go:

wired:
Secure connection

wireless:
Extra secure

Aside from etherkiller being old, you could just as easily set the building on fire if you wanted to kill infrastructure.

This requires you to be in the same building if not the same room as the device you are trying to kill. If you have physical access to a machine... etc...

I literally thought that it was the year 2000 again.

Holy shit I am so fucking high right now.

Use one of these devices first.

Nah, it's this but for USB instead of ethernet.

Oh, fuck.

bad enough every video cable is an adapter, now what, more? [groans]

Yes!
Let's not confuse multi-port with adapter.

Multi-port:
My prior art, the earphone-mains combo.

Adapter:
Something like the Ether Killer.

and that probably won't change until these fucking things start breaking.

Some good information to be found HERE. Note that the 4th entry down might be JUST what you are looking for...

Are you serious, you don't know the infamous ETHERKILLER?!?!?!? http://www.fiftythree.org/etherkiller/

Your router can't understand the destination network of 60hz 120VAC. Clearly as this little thread shows, you need to have your routing tables set up to send all traffic off the LAN before you plug in one of these. I recommend setting your netmask on all internal machines to 255.255.255.255 first just to be safe.

http://www.fiftythree.org/etherkiller/

I know people like that. There's one at the office... he was excited to find an old motorola 9-pin serial to RJ-45 adapter used to program certain 2-way radios. Why was this a big deal? He also had a USB-serial device used for old blackberrys. He figured he'd be able to use his ipod as a network attached storage. The missing link... a male-male usb adapter. Luckily... he had a USB hub he wasn't using. Game-set-match! (True story.)

Wow. How long did it take the fire department to get the blaze under control?

You should get him one of these. Tell him it's that new "broadband over power lines" stuff.

http://www.fiftythree.org/etherkiller/

Install plug-in ethernet ports (alongside laptop power outlets).

No good.

Did anyone else read this comment and instantly think Etherkiller?

Basically, this. A very reasonable point, and one that I hadn't considered myself.

The Etherkiller

No, the old devices are most definitely not compatible!

This much discussion and not a single link to the IDE Killer (scroll about halfway down)?

EtherKiller

Letting the magic smoke out of electronics since 1992.

use one of these when nobody else is watching. Problem solved.

I used to have this problem and then I found this product: http://www.fiftythree.org/etherkiller/
It is much quicker than manually pulling cables out of switches. Those switches will no longer be passing any amounts of junk data through them.

Even better it works on that old BNC crap you still have hanging around the office.

What you really need is a RJ-45 to NEMA WD-1 6-15P patch cord ;)

Cause I think this is more deserving of the moniker than the current Etherkiller.

Well, OK, it's not 10KV but I think it would do the job.

is a coincidence, or just completely made up

My favorite site of destroying thing in unorthodox manners: Meet the Etherkiller.

Well, you could take the principle behind the Etherkiller and apply it to SATA or USB or whatever your SSD's connection is. Sending 120 volts to your flash chips should quite literally toast them, right?

Agreed, the OP was way on the other extreme.

In your case, it sounds like there must be some sort of problem there with power or perhaps grounding. I agree that consumer grade switches fail more frequently, but unless you have more switches than computers, one every two weeks is excessive even for cheap switches.

Does anyone have one of these in their dorm?

I can think of at least one way that a bad NIC can take out other hardware... Etherkiller. Kids, don't try this at home!

Forget the WRT54G. Even the lowly Etherkiller does a better job. Sure, it doesn't provide NAT, DMZ, VPN, port forwarding, or even wireless card support, but once you plug one of these babies into your Ethernet card, it will "physically keep threats away from your PC"... at a fraction of the cost! You don't even need to keep it plugged in!

You must be one of the good sysadmins. The bad sysadmins have just been yanking the cables out of the back of the routers.

The only Etherkiller I know is

http://www.fiftythree.org/etherkiller/

Killer network cards have been around for so long, there's actually a Localtalk version here:
http://www.fiftythree.org/etherkiller/

I got you an Ether Killer for Christmas.

My bad.

The EtherKiller and friends: http://www.fiftythree.org/etherkiller/

I once had a PC case where the connection to the 'hard disk is running' LED had an evil twin that connected to the power supply....

My most sincere apologies to Fiftythree.org, but when I read about plugging unconventional things into the computer, this classic came to mind. Note: the USBKiller is not listed. Scatter a few of these outside the back door of your local bank.

The EtherKiller and friends: http://www.fiftythree.org/etherkiller/
The Google cache

Or this stupid thing is more in line with the aim of the article.

The article is nothing but a slashvertisement. But, if you want a _real_ NIC killer, here you go.

&nbsp

I wonder if it's compatible with an Etherkiller :)

...to use one of these ?

Try this at home, really! One day the local salesmen reps of a major networking company (that rhymes with Nabisco) came by to talk to my boss. Since he was on the phone they came in and talked to me so I showed them the etherkiller. I think it scared the shit out of them. I also got yelled at by my boss since he thinks we might not ever get warranty support again.

Build and use one of these guys. That should do the trick.

The service of knowingly causing a computer to become engulfed in flames.

This service is now more commonly known as a slashdotting.

It used to be the case that improperly rewiring cables was one of the most common causes. Thankfully, that laborious method has since been replaced.