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The USB Kill Stick, Priced at $56, Is Designed To Destroy Laptops, PCs, TVs (zdnet.com)
There's a new USB Kill device in the market today which can destroy any device it touches. ZDNet reports: For just a few bucks, you can pick up a USB stick that destroys almost anything that it's plugged into. Laptops, PCs, televisions, photo booths -- you name it. Once a proof-of-concept, the pocket-sized USB stick now fits in any security tester's repertoire of tools and hacks, says the Hong Kong-based company that developed it. It works like this: when the USB Kill stick is plugged in, it rapidly charges its capacitors from the USB power supply, and then discharges -- all in a matter of seconds. On unprotected equipment, the device's makers say it will "instantly and permanently disable unprotected hardware." You might be forgiven for thinking, "Well, why exactly?" The lesson here is simple enough. If a device has an exposed USB port -- such as a copy machine or even an airline entertainment system -- it can be used and abused, not just by a hacker or malicious actor, but also electrical attacks.
Whoopee. I can hit it with a hammer for free, or plug it into the power line for a couple of bucks.
If you have physical access to the device, you can beat the fucking shit out of it with a rock.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Is it evil if I were to buy several of these, scratch the warning off, and leave them around the building/parking lot after a computer security meeting just to see who plugs it in first?
How is this different from any other form of vandalism?
It's not. It's not "security testing", it's not something an honest "security tester" will have in his "toolbox". It's vandalism and destructive behaviour pretending to be respectable activity.
How DARE anyone expose a USB port where something can be plugged in for some legitimate purpose? Those money grubbing airlines who are putting USB charging ports on their seat-back systems so you can power your mobile device while on a four hour flight -- how DARE they! And those charging ports that are starting to show up in the waiting areas for those flights? They deserve to be taught a lesson. Kill anything with a USB port on it. It's "security testing" to see if they can survive. Who cares if the service they were providing goes away?
"Because I can" is not an excuse for destroying other people's property. "TV-B-Gone" is an annoyance; destroying someone's $1000 laptop because they fell asleep next to you on the airplane while it was running and it happened to have an open USB port is pathetic. There is no legitimate purpose for this thing. If you need ESD testing for your own hardware designs, use the appropriate tool. ESD testing other people's stuff is, and should be, criminal.
I wonder what other fun things you could do with a USB-charged capacitor, preferable things that don't cause actual damage.
How about a tiny speaker that plays in a loop
"This idiot just plugged in a hacked USB device!"
Didn't see the You-tube video of the concept version of this being demoed on a laptop did you? Fried the screen and board in the first pulse and took out the power system and everything else with the second (each pulse takes about a second to charge and release). These things are not pushing a 10V signal on a 5V line, they are pumping a 230V charge into the port with magnitudes more amperage than static electricity, the simple over-voltage protections on current USB ports can't protect against this.
A real solution to a device like this will require a far more robust design on the over-volt protection on the ports. Something that can resist 200V+.
Ahh, but I could make a USB kill stick that kills USB ports that kill 'kill sticks.' It would protect the data lines, sense the way-too-high voltage coming in on said lines, and counter it with a power source having *bigger* voltage and substantial current capacity.
And clamping diodes & fuses pretty much eliminate any possibility of ultra-ultra-ultra high-speed serial ports, so kiss Thunderbolt, USB 3, and everything else goodbye. And probably wouldn't help much, anyway, since everything downstream from the port will likely be fried by the time the fuse finally melts & opens the circuit back up. If, by some miracle, a MOV wouldn't screw up gigabits-per-second-per-balanced-pair data transmission, most users are STILL looking at what's effectively a total loss because those MOVs rarely are easily-replaceable without at least intermediate-level electronics skills.
what if my USB port detects kill sticks and sprays you with pepper spray and calls the police?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Because there is always some asshole who feels the need to break stuff.
These public USB Power ports were set up as a convenience for the public and the customers, so that Doctor can have his phone charged so he doesn't miss that life saving call. They are giving us free energy to power our mobile devices. The TVs to entertain us, while we are stuck waiting. But no there has to be some jerk who needs to find a way to break it. We can't have an infrastructure for new technology now, just because it can be broke.
Now this device is just for bad people to do bad things, there is no good in it. It isn't even good enough for properly destroying technology as for the most part it will probably just damage the USB interface card and not reliably break the rest of the system.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
As an EE, I have some experience with this. I really do digital logic chip design, and leave the design of the IO pins to the analog guys (and I am NOT an analog guy)...
However, pins are designed to dissipate excess charge using the "human body model." The specification is charging a small capacitor to a few thousand volts and dissipating that into a pin. Since the capacitance is small, the total amperage is very small. There are zener diodes built into IO pads that can handle this small amount of current. An ESD event will only last for the barest fraction of a second. Now, if you actually intentionally put too much voltage across pins for a prolonged period of time, I can easily imagine those zener diodes dying. Once that happens, the voltage will start to play merry hell with the logic.
I also did some government (military) work a decade ago. With those systems, you generally hardened them against EMP pulses (don't want a nuke taking down your electronics), so we used something called "transorbs.". Basically, these are big, beefy external zener diodes that can clamp this type of event. HOWEVER, from what I recall, those diodes put too much capacitance on the line, which would do very bad things to high-speed data lines, such as the ones found in USB data lines. Transorbs are great for things like low-speed serial port lines (which explains standards like MIL-STD-1553. I do not know if transorbs have improved much (not done that sort of thing for 10 years), but these are the types of problems you have to face when dealing with something like this -- the devices needed to protect your USB ports might just make your USB ports unusable.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
"-200VDC is discharged over the data lines of the host device." is all it says, but the charge will be tiny, i find it doubtful that this will do anything beyond maybe fry the usb controller or possibly some diodes.
Yes, all VLSI chips have diodes on every single output pin. Except the really, really high-frequency pins. But these diodes are tiny and delicate things. They provide only a moderate level of protection.
slot machines with usb changing ports seems like a like some may want to destroy after losing big. I do hope they have there own power source.
Without knowing the details of the device hard to say if current standards are enough protection
Enough protection for what? The USB standard provides basic requirements to ensure compatibility between the devices and with a standard use case. e.g. Requirements around voltages and currents into and out of the socket. The design of the plug and socket includes a grounded outer shell to prevent static discharge from the body hitting the datalines when touched. There's a whole chapter in the standard on current limiting, and most reference implementations of USB controllers now provide polyfuses as downstream devices clearly don't obey the USB standard very well (e.g. Hubs feeding +5V into the upstream port).
Now the key thing here is that there's almost nothing you can do to protect the USB socket against this attack in a way that is re-settable. This little device is designed specifically to kill polyfuses and protection diodes by applying -100V pulses to the data lines repeatedly until even the best of these protection circuits will break down.
It's an incredibly targeted attack and not something you can fix by massaging the standard.