Computer-killing USB drives now on sale for less than $60

It sounds like something out of a B-grade Hollywood plot — a glimmer drive that you connect to a PC and is fit for wrecking it inside seconds. A year ago, programmer Dark Purple uncovered a USB streak drive intended to sear a cutting edge framework when you connect it to. The drive works by releasing - 220V through the USB port.

The precise points of interest on how the drive worked weren't quickly discharged. In any case, there's presently a Hong Kong-based organization offering a USB Kill Drive 2.0 for just $50. Here's the way the organization depicts the item:

The USB Kill 2.0 is a testing device created to test USB ports against power surge attacks. The USB Kill 2.0 tests your device’s resistance against this attack. The USB Kill collects power from the USB power lines (5V, 1 – 3A) until it reaches ~ -240V, upon which it discharges the stored voltage into the USB data lines.
This charge / discharge cycle is very rapid and happens multiple times per second.
The process of rapid discharging will continue while the device is plugged in, or the device can no longer discharge – that is, the circuit in the host machine is broken.

The coordinated way of advanced SoCs implies that impacting the USB controller with - 200V the way this drive wills ordinarily cause serious harm, up to and including decimating the SoC. While present day motherboards incorporate overcurrent security, this regularly ensures against positive voltage. (The contrast amongst positive and negative voltage is a reference to the voltage in respect to the ground). On the off chance that the voltage source is associated with ground by a "- " terminal, the voltage source is sure. In the event that it associates by means of the ~ezentity_quot+ezentity_quot~ terminal, the voltage source is negative.

The organization likewise plans to offer a USB Kill Tester Shield, which it cases will anticipate both the USB Kill gadget from working and shield client information from specific sorts of snooping or interruption in the event that you connect to an obscure charging station or other gadget. This sort of interruption is known as "juice jacking," however it's not clear in the event that this assault vector has been broadly utilized as a part of this present reality. There's very little to say in regards to the Kill Tester Shield right now — the greater part of the connections on the site to the genuine item are non-utilitarian as of this written work. Admonition Emptor is a word of wisdom in a circumstance like this.

The bigger inquiry, I believe, is whether gadgets like this represent a risk to the normal purchaser. At this moment, I think they don't. At $5, it's anything but difficult to envision somebody requesting these in mass and scrambling them just to sink with individuals general. At $50 every, you likely aren't going to falter over a modest piece of death.

In the meantime, in any case, ponders have demonstrated that up to half of individuals will merrily connect to a USB drive they found on the ground without avoiding potential risk for what sort of information or malware may be on the drive. In the event that the USB Kill 2.0 is really dispatching in volume, it's presumably a smart thought to return to that inclination — or if nothing else keep an old PC around for testing.