By appearance, the USB Killer 2.0 looks like any other normal stick but delivers a negative 220-volt electric surge into the USB port of the computer system and kills it within seconds. But the USB Killer’s reliance on plain old electricity, instead of running an application, makes it an unusually versatile instrument of destruction.
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In the example documented by Dark Purple – see video below – the laptop is shown to be completely incapacitated after the payload is delivered.
Experts say the USB stick highlights the fact users should never plug unknown devices into their machine.
Should you ever want to fry your own hardware or someone else’s for a few reason, Russian researcher “Dark Purple” has just the thing for you: a USB stick that does just that when inserted into any USB device.
Dark Purple went on to say that the damage wrought by the device is so far limited to the motherboard. “It is extremely unlikely that the hard disk or the information on it was damaged”, he wrote.
If you are wondering why it is dubbed as USB Killer version 2.0, according to thehackernews, this is not the first time Dark Purple made similar device.
He said he was inspired by a story about a man stealing a USB drive from someone’s backpack.
Dark Purple, the inventor of USB Killer mentioned in his blog that the idea of creating a powerful USB weapon that kills computers came up from a discussion with his colleagues at work. Upon inserting it into his laptop, “he burnt half of it down”. When the drive is plugged in, it beings to draw power from the port which is then fed through an inverting DC to DC converter and used to charge up capacitors, electrical components capable of storing charge for later release. When the voltage is reached, the DC/DC is switched off. At the same time, the filed transistor opens.
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When the voltage on capacitor increases to -7V, the transistor closes and the DC/DC starts.
