USB Killer
DIYIt was a usual gloomy winter morning. My colleagues and I were drinking our morning coffee, sharing the news and there were no signs of trouble. But then a friend told about…
(a quote from a chat in Skype):
I read an article about how a dude in the subway fished out a USB flash drive from the outer pocket of some guy’s bag. The USB drive had “128” written on it. He came home, inserted it into his laptop and burnt half of it down. He wrote “129” on the USB drive and now has it in the outer pocket of his bag…
A Picture to Attract Attention:
Since I work in the company engaged in the development and manufacture of electronics, my colleagues and I are began to discuss options for creating a USB flash drive, that «would burn half a laptop down.» We had plenty of hardcore, fantastic, as well as quite real, options. This fun discussion could have been the end of the story, if I was not going to order the production of printed circuit boards for other projects.
As a rule, the USB interface of a computer has a USB plug connection -> ESD diodes (static protection) -> filter elements -> security elements in the chip that contains the physical layer of the USB interface. In modern computers, the USB “physics” is built almost in the processor. In older computers, North/South bridges are in charge of the USB. The task of the designed USB flash drive is to burn all of this stuff, or at least kill the USB port.
Within a week, I have developed quite specific circuit implementation, ordered components. After a few months of waiting for them, I made a full-fledged prototype. I tested the idea and “burnt down” everything I could.
Then, I developed and ordered printed circuit boards in China and made a combat model.
Off-topic: ordered it all here. Terrible quality.
Soldered it by hand, I am so-so mounter.
I designed it as a regular USB flash drive.
The basic idea of the USB drive is quite simple. When we connect it up to the USB port, an inverting DC/DC converter runs and charges capacitors to -110V. When the voltage is reached, the DC/DC is switched off. At the same time, the filed transistor opens. It is used to apply the -110V to signal lines of the USB interface. When the voltage on capacitors increases to -7V, the transistor closes and the DC/DC starts. The loop runs till everything possible is broken down. Those familiar with the electronics have already guessed why we use negative voltage here. I‘ll explain to others that negative voltage is easier to commutate, as we need the N-channel field resistor, which, unlike the P-channel one, can have larger current for the same dimensions.
I’m not going to talk to you about the application area, but a former colleague says that it’s like an atomic bomb: cool to have, but can not be applied.
Arriving at work, you find a USB drive on your table. What would you do?
- insert the USB drive into the port to see the content
- throw it in the trash
Would you buy such «device»?
- yes
- no
Comments
el_shayan
Sector01
Renaud Richardet
Tim Lossen
gyozafiend
Vinicius Ianni
Edmark Ciminelli
THANKS
Timothy Lehman
Fre-D
Mark Ronald Gladue
Thank You.
Tom Mason
ydfeng
damian_zet
Carlos Magana
Costin Moise
jdmtra
getback
Matthew Simpson
Lukáš Matoušek
andrew
maze
Marco Auhbt
Ben Dooks
Rápli András
getback
andrew
Gert-Jan Admiraal
I can imagine that the HW design of those devices is the key. Still I would really like to see if the intermediate hardware could prevent destruction.
Duarte Monteiro
Kukuruku Hub
Gy Tis
loreii
loudaslife
phil_mckracken
getback
Rithesh M Nanda
Rex Tipton
Mohd Rasheed
I Appreciate If You Can Bring It As Open Source.
H Andrew Lipps
Ahmet Kilic
IAmSJSpartabutts
mat6
Kukuruku Hub
Terry
damian_zet
Ivan Roman
mat6
Ivan Roman
«Hello dear friend,
You have all the reason not to trust any service on deepweb and the beauty part of it is that everyone can be scammed. If we scam people, won’t last too long and we will lost any credibility. We did not put all this effort to create the website and tor services just to scam for .5BTC, it’s not worth it. Did evomarket offered any warranties for their customers? No. They scammed a few days ago for thousand BTC. Who can we trust?
Our electronist is anon, we’re working with him only by upfront payment. We’ll ask for him some documentation soon, the main problem is that we are the only ones who sell this beauty for the moment and we’ll like to keep it that way.
As soon we receive the documentation, we’ll upload it to our website.
Thank you for your interest,
Best wishes, DaskUSB Team»
mat6
chinztor
Francis Taisant
Paolo SuperCoppa
Catalin Alin
Yassir B
Dean Amb Rose
Mohammad Amin Ansari
Carlos Malavé⚡
getback
Kukuruku Hub
Ken
First of all, there is no such thing as a «n-channel field resistor»….
Second of all, I forwarded this article to my father, an Electronics Engineer of over 50 years.
He stated that your «theory is wacky at best»…..
Send me an eval unit! I’ll have a proto-USB condom up and running in a few hours!
Kukuruku Hub
mat6
Ropes — Fast Strings