USB Killer can fry any computer in seconds — watch it in action

A Russian security researcher has developed a more powerful “USB killer”, which has double the power of its original predecessor. A booby-trapped flash drive, for instance, was the means by which the United States and Israel reportedly infected Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment facility with the Stuxnet worm.

Dark Purple didn’t open-source plans for the device, but it’s plausible a dedicated hacker could reverse-engineer it from the current description.

The designer of the USB Killer, who goes under the pseudonym Dark Purple, shared details of the project on Habrahabr, a Russian IT and computer science blog. 0 features a DC-to-DC converter that charges a set of capacitors hidden inside once it’s been plugged into a USB port. That energy is then redirected back into the device as a 220-volt electric surge, again and again, until the hardware completely fails.

As viewers can see, the USB stick looks normal, and there are no outward signs it’s malicious.

However, such scenario would somehow lose its significance when compared to a new type of threat that does not only destroy files, but ultimately destroys the physical computer itself.

0 works by drawing a small electrical charge from the host device, and storing it in an internal capacitor. Presumably the USB port is fried, and it wouldn’t be surprising if circuits on the motherboard were damaged, too. It may be possible for the processor and hard drive to survive but that’s pure speculation at this point.

While this development certainly highlights the importance of being cautious when it comes to examining an unknown USB stick, there is a few consolation.