Today I’m going to talk about a field of engineering that I don’t specially like but I find useful and fun when applied to real life cases: electrical engineering. And more specifically, we’re going to talk about USB killers.
So, USB kill switches are pretty cool in concept. There are casual ones that are used to protect your computer or quickly shut it down if you need to. These are usually software-based and trigger actions like locking your computer or shutting it down when the USB is plugged in. It’s pretty useful for privacy, especially if someone tries to mess with your system or steal data. But this is NOTHING compared to the extreme version of USB kill switches: the USB killers, which actually destroy your computer!
A USB killer is a hardware device that delivers a high-voltage surge to your computer through its USB port, and it’s meant to physically damage the system. It does this by using capacitors, which are electronic components that store electrical charge. The cool part is how these capacitors work:
- First step: the charge. When you plug the USB killer into your computer’s USB port, it uses the 5V from the USB to charge its capacitors.
- Second step: the discharge. Once the capacitors are charged, they discharge all the stored energy at once, sometimes up to 200V or more, which is way more than what a USB port is supposed to handle. That’s the whole concept of a capacitor — it can discharge super quickly.
- Third step: the surge. That sudden burst of voltage hits the computer’s internal circuits and causes a massive surge. This can fry the motherboard, the power supply, the RAM, and even the processor!
- Fourth step: emotional damage. Now you can cry — your computer is completely dead.
Basically, it can destroy your entire computer. The motherboard usually gets fried first because it’s the main hub connecting everything. The processor and RAM are at risk too, since they rely on a stable electrical flow. Once the damage happens, your computer could be completely bricked, and even worse, the power supply might also be dead, meaning your computer won’t turn on anymore.
And all that data you’ve stored on the device? Well… it’s probably gone too.
While these USB killers are cool from a tech standpoint, they’re illegal in a lot of places because they’re made to cause damage to someone else’s property. But it’s not just about the law and you being in legal trouble; these things are dangerous. They can cause electric shocks, and in extreme cases, they could even start a fire if used carelessly.
Anyway, extreme USB killers are an insane example of how far electronics can go when you start playing with high-voltage electricity and capacitors. They’re cool from an engineering perspective, but they are also very dangerous. Hope you enjoyed this short article!
credits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1Mpsqkde0A https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/USB-Killer