A perfectly legal device that fries your computer...

[Firefly 35]

So apparently there's now a device that can be plugged into anything with a usb port, and when it is, it will draw power from the device it's plugged into, shoot it back at 200 volts, and repeat until the device is toast.  Apparently it's called the usb killer and is approved by the FCC for use as a "testing device" for engineers and developers.  What the heck were these guys thinking?!

https://usbkill.com

(Don't worry, the website won't fry your computer, I think)

[DailyDiapers]

"let me check this flash drive.... oh fuck!"

[Firefly 35]

The flash drive must have reformatted your computer.

[oznl]

These have been around for a while.

Data availability is one of the three planks of security (the others being data confidentiality and data integrity).  These devices threaten data availability and are therefore a security thing.  There's a legitimate use for these things to be used by agencies and OEM in hardening their systems against this new threat vector.

I'm not so anxious to see them banned.  Human ingenuity is pretty good at misusing many kinds of otherwise-banal technology for the forces of not-niceness and once we start trying ban these types of thing, we're going to wind up playing whack-a-mole with all sorts of otherwise-useful things.

If somebody finds a thumb drive on the ground and goes and sticks it in their machine, they're cruising for a Darwin award anyway.  If an embedded machine in a public place is exposing a USB port, then we need to test and harden it.   On an only-slightly-less scary scenario, not far from where I live there were a whole bunch of small thumb-drives randomly letter-boxed to people's houses.  These things were loaded with some malware: a primitive form of marketing I guess.

 

 

 

[redneck diaper boy]

Probably to test for UL and CSA safety standards. I am sure it fries the port. This is done because there really are people, who will find a way to connect their USB port to an electrical outlet. The object is to be certain that the computer will not catch fire upom misuse .