Killer USB stick destroys your computer in seconds

50Twuncle

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet-security/11932793/Killer-USB-stick-destroys-your-computer-in-seconds.html

This is clearly tosh - what about the magnetic hdd ?
Is it possible to get a USB stock to hit the motherboard with mains voltage ?

marleyboy

Its not impossible. Nowadays you can get a voltage charge from something as small as an e-cig battery.

RumRat

Why would you think it was Tosh?

Fightsback

Who needs a booby trapped USB stick, Windows 10 is doing a fine job

Fightsback

50Twuncle wrote: »

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet-security/11932793/Killer-USB-stick-destroys-your-computer-in-seconds.html

This is clearly tosh - what about the magnetic hdd ?
Is it possible to get a USB stock to hit the motherboard with mains voltage ?

How do you think a taser works ?

Capacitive discharge through a step up transformer.

mgfvvc

It's overstated in the headline. The article says 'Although the laptop looks completely dead after the USB is done with it, Dark Purple claims that it will be restored once the motherboard has been replaced. "It is extremely unlikely that the hard disk or the information on it was damaged," he wrote.'

[Deleted User]

I'm sure the next one will end up overwriting your HD with random content, then blow your CPU (then a little speaker will play "har har")

Nilrem

That's fairly old news, I think I read about a similar thing on a tech site something over a year ago.

It could kill the machine, but would be more likely to at most kill the motherboard, or the USB sockets (USB has a reasonable level of protection for the motherboard, especially modern USB chipsets), but things like the HDD would likely be fine as any charge going in via the USB port would have to pass through a lot of circuitry (including a bunch that is designed to stop voltage/current spikes) to reach the parts of the board that would be connected to the HDD.