If you were looking for a USB stick that “instantly and permanently [disables] unprotected hardware,” you’re in luck. You can now purchase one for 75 bucks!
USBKill.com
According to ZDNet, “when the USB Kill stick is plugged in, it rapidly charges its capacitors from the USB power supply, and then discharges — all in the matter of seconds.” Wonderful! It’s hard to imagine a scenario where deploying this tool wouldn’t lead to felony vandalism charges. But if you really, really, want to blow up your computer, go right ahead.
This exploding USB drive was originally a fun, proof-of-concept project by researchers before, but now it’s an actual product that’s for sale.
https://www.usbkill.com/usb-killer/8-usb-killer.html
Many hacker toys like USB Kill begin as simple research projects and never actually make it to market, so the fact that you can actually buy one of these little destructo-USB sticks is slightly worrying. Guess it’s time to cover up your USB ports.
Note that at the time of writing, the device was sold out, but new stock will be available come the 14th.
This story originally appeared on Gizmodo
Comments
15 responses to “You Can Now Buy A Weaponised USB Stick”
So is there any positive applications for this at all?
‘Cause I can’t think of any.
Corporate sabotage.
The only thing I can think of is if you wanted to fry hardware that you wanted to decommission and make sure it could never be recovered. It’s pretty rare though and nothing that can’t be done with a hammer.
Obviously there are lots of malicious applications, but they are all pretty dick moves. I’ll admit, the thought of remotely doing yet his to DDOSers has been exceptionally appealing, but you’ve got to find the buggers first. But that’s still hardly legal.
It wouldn’t necessarily fry hardware, at least not in a suitable way to protect the information that was stored on there. The USB ports on most devices are a long way from any storage medium, this device will likely pop some caps and other passive components, fry a few ICs, then dissipate over all the other runs in the PC. Most modern motherboards would have protection circuits isolating various components, anyway, so all you might end up doing is frying the USB ports or controller (probably the whole motherboard though…).
I can confirm this. I’ve had my UBS 2 ports fried on my mboard, but UBS3 and everything else is unaffected (I voltage tested everything to make sure I wasn’t getting dodgy current).
How long until there are news stories about people bringing these to libraries, schools or universities and frying thousands of dollars of equipment?
Yep. And the back of USB enabled plane seats.
What was (or is?) Boot and Nuke? This instantly sprang to mind when I saw this.
The real question is why the main picture on this article is the surge-protecting shield (ie the anti-kill stick) instead of the device itself. Just because it looks cooler?
“Website is offline, Error 502 Bad Gateway”
Developer tested it on the wrong machine, or thought it was a normal USB stick, perhaps?
This is why we can’t have nice things.
No more USB sticks on planes now.
This seems … illegal? Its only real use is to be a prick :\ and like @lichbane said it’s nothing you can’t do with a hammer for a good drop for free.
I’d actually buy this and have it attached to my car keys.
Reason being: my m3 was stolen earlier this year, was found eventually but found too late…
Police are useless, even after you’ve given them video, photographic evidence and names of the criminals.
Just knowing that there is a chance I’ve ruined something of theirs would have given me a little sense of wishful justice.
I loved that car 🙁
feels man 🙁 sucks when cars get stolen
Uhm.. If you want to destroy a computer why not just take a hammer to it? Or throw it out a window! No costly tools required.