What is a USB Killer?

We tend to connect a number of devices to the USB port of our laptop or computers, whether it is a pen drive or an external hard drive or anything else. But, there exists a device that can destroy your computer or laptop, that looks like a normal pen drive but when inserted into the USB port have the capability of destroying your system within few seconds.This device is nothing but a USB Killer or USB Kill.

Source: Google Images

This device got the capability of not only destroying your laptop and computer but it also got the power of destroying anything with a USB Port, that can be your televisions, your mobile phones or Xbox or PlayStation etc.

The Security of our system's USB port or even our 3.5mm Audio Jack has always been a big concern, we don't ever want anyone to access our computer system without our permission, for example, someone can easily create a pen drive with a little coding and can insert into our USB port and copy our system's file in background.There is a big flaw in USB port, that it does not restrict a user or a device with the amount of power it is supplying with it, this can result in completely destroying of our system as the amount of power we are sending through the USB Port is much more that our system can handle.

The marketing of this product is done in the name of security for system administrator to examine the security of USB ports , The USB Killer was developed by a security hardware team based in Hong Kong the team wants to raise awareness of this hardware vulnerability and they say that this will encourage all the manufacturer around the globe to act on it same like they act on software-related vulnerabilities.

How Does it work and fry a System:

This small device consists of DC to DC converter, few capacitors  and then there exists a transistor, whenever we connect this device to any of our computer system or some other device that has  a USB port, it will take power from the connected USB port and then will charge the capacitors negatively and when the capacitor will be at their full capacity then the transistor will transfer the negative voltage to the connected USB device and it keep on following the same procedure until the system gets fried.

In some cases the complete computer gets destroyed but there are cases also where only the USB port gets damaged, the motherboard can get damaged a  bit or there might be some damage on CPU only, it depends on the device to device.

Source: Google Images

Apple is the only company that has taken a step against it and the USB ports that we get in a MacBook are protected against this USB killer attack. Now, there might be chances of damaging the data transfer capability of USB port and then USB port will only be able for the charging purpose.Apple and Samsung phones have protection against this USB killer and if you try and plug in it to them, the USB killer won't affect them much.

Check out this video here

So, Yes If you own a system that is easily accessible and is available for the public use then make sure before someone inserting a USB drive in it, and check that it is a normal USB drive and not a USB Killer.There are a number of Videos on YouTube where different guys have checked this USB killer with different devices make sure to check them out.

Source of Information:http://fortune.com/2016/09/10/usb-killer-hardware/