Computer-killing USB drives now on sale

originally posted by: DAVID64
I may not be a "techie" kinda guy, but if I don't want a computer to ever work again AND destroy the hard drive.....I take the sure fire, low tech approach. I have rather large, insanely strong rare Earth magnets handy and this -

works every time.

Otherwise Known As the Hillary Hammer.

a reply to: savemebarry


Yup, I read it wrong. It makes no sense in this way.

Initially I thought all the DNM owners and user would be happy to have one like this but it is quite the opposite.


Plugging in an usb like this would actually keep the data safe and prevent any attempt to erase or encrypt it.

originally posted by: DAVID64
I may not be a "techie" kinda guy, but if I don't want a computer to ever work again AND destroy the hard drive.....I take the sure fire, low tech approach. I have rather large, insanely strong rare Earth magnets handy and this -

works every time.

Hey! Thats the same way we destroyed comps and HDs in the army that had classified on them, well except we also burned the HDs after wiping them with magnets and crushing them.

originally posted by: JDeLattre89

Hey! Thats the same way we destroyed comps and HDs in the army that had classified on them, well except we also burned the HDs after wiping them with magnets and crushing them.

That is why US is shhhs right now. That is one of destroying evidence. As the army protects the enemy. They will continue to get away with their mad experiments.

This is more malicious destruction than it is useful. The Rubber Ducky USB command stick is a lot more useful. It uses an extremely easy scripting language to mimic keyboard commands thousands of times faster than a human can.

All you have to do is write out the commands you want to send ahead of time. Find the target computer, spend 10-30 seconds depending on task, and walk out with you device.

Just connect a 12V battery to a USB connector. Same effect. Heck, juat plug your old computer with a 110V/220V switvh on the PSU! Swiched to 110V into a 220V Power point... Or in the old days just give a commodore PET the following command POKE 59458,62, or on old line printers you could blow up the printer just by printing lots of 0xFF?... Apple Firewire, there you could erase the whole BIOS by plugging into the Firewire port, even when the computer was off, and gave a series of commands....

You can blow up your whole car by coonecting 110V across the battery terminals, lol

Any electronic has a vulnerability...., so what is new?

a reply to: Kandinsky

or a free thinking ATS er who sees the Feds coming and doesn't want them to set him up, once they seize
his PC for "evidence"

The thing just takes the USB supply voltage, runs it through a boost converter to a few hundred volts, stores that in a capacitor, then discharges it through either the USB supply, data lines, or both.

Depending on the design of the system and the amount of energy the stick can store before firing, you could get anywhere from no effect to permanent damage to the chipset, rendering the system useless. It's sort of unpredictable.

Military designs generally are less susceptible to that sort of attack. I design a pretty big cap in downstream of the FET controlling the port power, and while you *could* store enough energy in your stick to pop that cap, it's not likely. I also toss in clamp diodes on the power and data lines that will short the line to ground briefly if you get an overvoltage. They have a limited amount of energy handling ability but they would also be likely to deal with whatever you can put in a stick.

That's because the military has a series of tests where they discharge something very like this into your ports to test for RF and EMP susceptibility. You have to have SOME amount of defense against this sort of thing.

Most commercial boards don't have any protection, though.

That said, we once built something like this for blowing out electronics in a building. It worked insanely well. But it was a lot bigger and heavier.

a reply to: projectvxn

Oh if only I bothered to learn some powershell, but writing simple bash scripts to do a lot of weird things to nux boxes is very easy. With bash you can pretty well clobber together commands and expect it to work with minimal syntax additions.

I really don't see a point of this USB to be honest other than sabotage and ending a conflict on robotic army. I guess we might be at war against robots in the future.

I got a way to screw up a computer. Defragging the partion or the MBR table with a defragger that moves files that normally are locked.

Ha!It even looks like a little Cthulhu!

a reply to: jadedANDcynical

While the data may be available on the platter.

The controller may not be available.

Controllers are hard to pin down for old pc's. They put in slight changes in different runs of the same drive and maybe even different firmware. This can make data recovery down right impossible.

While you can attempt to read the platters. The costs associated with doing so may be cost prohibitive.

originally posted by: DAVID64
I may not be a "techie" kinda guy, but if I don't want a computer to ever work again AND destroy the hard drive.....I take the sure fire, low tech approach. I have rather large, insanely strong rare Earth magnets handy and this -

works every time.

That works in destroying the data on a hard drive ONLY if you take the time to really pound the actual hard drive to pieces.

You can sledgehammer a computer to relative small bits, but if the hard drive platters are still intact, then a forensic computer expert could be able to retrieve the information.

... so the USB ports dont respond?
... the guys laptop that was flashing power status doesnt turn on now?

.... wanna know something that kills laptops and is easily found?.. .water!

a reply to: andy06shake
Seems like a silly waste of time.

Computers are far from hard to kill or wipe out. A simple bat or like another member said hammer will do the trick. Even dropping it off a table may kill it. But hey, if anybody wanted to wipe out any data there in it or kill it, simply picking it up and smashing it on the concrete would do the trick.

As for data stored in. Well, I doubt that any of this stuff or all our data in all the worlds databanks will be around in the next few thousand years, or even hundreds. What I am saying is that computers are far from the best way to store data, even DNA is pretty much useless in the scope of things, but biological data storage is still billions of years ahead of digital computer digital data storage devices you see around you.

But ya! You could buy some fancy PC death USB to crash a computer and hope it dies, or something. Or you can just use a bat, as that will achieve the same effect to a much much much greater degree.

Even small static shocks kill it, I remember some months ago got shocked from touching a plastic bag much bigger then the shocks the guy is getting using that egg beater and generator, tin this static shock experiment. It felt like a bee sting and I could see the electricity between my finger and the plastic even in bright daylight. But at least the case did not die. Still a bat would definitely kill a computer with the quickness.

Do you know the No1 killer.
It's something free.
WATER!

a reply to: andy06shake

Most computers have. An h/w default meaning motherboards will be fine. The port is damaged however and would need to be replaced.

Do all profits from the sale of this drive go to the Clinton Foundation?

I'm sure Hillary is the mastermind behind this thing........ No?