It's the battery replace it along with the port you plugged it in those devices will be repaired plug that to a regular PC without the CMOS battery your safe 😂
Count me in for an autopsy & repair video as well. I suspect some of the ports may come back to life due to thermal fuses resetting, but for e.g. the MacBook M2 I imagine the controller chip for charging got its guts blown out, as that's a common issue with 3rd-party chargers as well. The Switch probably has the charger chip destroyed as well, which just makes you wonder why they don't all have voltage clamp circuitry on the USB lines. The Z-Flip 3 clearly does, while the iPhone only seems to do fuses.
PS5 will definitely be dead, I've watched a lot of people who try to fix them with broken USB port's and if you're unlucky to cross VCC with the Data + or Data - pins. The data lines run STRAIGHT into the APU
@@lukedavis436 That's Apple HV-next-to-CPU-signal-lines levels of bad... yeah, in that case there's probably no way that the PS5 will come back without a full APU swap, which means that it's at most a spare parts system.
For the devices that stayed alive but had their ports dead (Especially the macbooks), giving them a restart would be a good idea because sometimes, computers turn off the port entirely when it notices something abnormal, and it turns it back on after a restart. Had experience with having ports screwing up on me like that, definitly my fault but, often times a restart solved it.
@@bobbyflaydx4062 since USB-C can also provide charging, it can be connected to same circuit as MagSafe for power delivery, so USB Killer load would spread there killing "just" charging capability which we see as "USB-C and MagSafe break". Also, Austin is wrong at the end when trying keyboard saying "there's no data either" - you don't know if there's no data, as there's no power (due to breakage) to power the dongle and said keyboard.
There are dozens of videos that demonstrate just how much Austin loves the Z Flip but this might be the ultimate example. You could hear the concern in his voice, see it in his face, and you could see the sheer joy when it survived
My Samsung Galaxy Note 5 survived a lightning strike that hit the house. The strike fried an entire circuit in the wall, the outlet on that circuit my phone charger was plugged into, the charger plugged into the Surge Protector, the cable connecting the charger to my phone, but my phone was unscathed. Other things that didn't survive that strike include: The circuit breaker for that circuit in the breaker box, the surge protector powering my PC, a toaster, the in-sink garbage disposal unit, several lamps and lightbulbs that were turned on at the time, and my step-father's iPhone 5 issued to him by the company he works for as well as the lightning charger it was plugged into. I told my step-father that it was ironic that the lighting charger couldn't handle the lightning when my Note 5 was just fine, however, so I was rooting for the Z Flip 3 to win.
MacBooks have the unfortunate habit of having the USB controller chips destroyed when you use third-party chargers, so I imagine the MacBook M2 at least requires that chip to be replaced. Same with the Switch. For other devices (like the first MacBook Pro and Gateway laptop), thermal fuses may kick in, indeed. Would love to see a follow-up & autopsy on these devices to see the actual damage.
@@MayaPoschthe Switch has 3 chips on the USB side from my knowledge, you have M92T36, BQ and P13USB. If the killer breached all 3 then the Tegra APU is next in line.
If I'm not wrong the USB killer charges the capacitors inside it up to 220V then sends all that voltage through the data lines on the port. It can fry whatever uses the data lines, those being the RAM, CPU, GPU, SSD and other parts that require data lines.
Newer Macbooks have a protective function where if an issue is detected when charging it will disable charging until the device is restarted. I'm not saying that the M2 Mac for sure survived with no damage but interested if it still wasn't charging after a restart of the system.
Should it have been though? Isn't it like the newest product there? MBA M2 was 2022, Switch 2017, PS5 2020, Iphone SE 2022, and I don't know about the other stuff. I was surprised by the charger though, it should have had some kind of surge protection ability I would think. Or maybe the USB port of such devices just weren't shielded like that, unlike a phone, which would have those kinds of protections since it's also a charge port. Which is why the phones survived. Well the iphone SE not as much, but still.
It is not proper grounding of the USB port to prevent this but proper ESD and over voltage protection. What dies is the chipset that has the USB controller in, its also is responsible for keeping the entire system alive
If you don't know the school where someone used one of these which Austin was talking about, basically this kid used one of these USB killers and he killed about 59 computers and he also killed like around 7 computer monitors and also some other devices. The school was Saint Rose college.
Someone at my school had something like these once, they snuck it into school and plugged it into peoples laptops. I got back at my MacBook Pro (2015) had shut down which I found weird, but it powered back up and even accepted a charge!
Rebooting the laptops where just the port died may fix them. I know windows will disable a port if it detects problems before it causes permanent damage.
I'm honestly suprised that the Z Flip 3 survived. Just goes to show that some companies are really trying hard to have their devices as protected as possible against such attacks
For the brandnew MB, you might have tried power-cycling it first before declaring that the USB-Cs are no longer accepting a charge. That way you could have found out if only a breaker triggered or a fuse outright blew.
I think a follow up video would be a good idea, partly to see the damage, but to also see if the damage could be something as simple as a blown fuse somewhere, or if you managed to totally fry something.
What a great way to set up colabs with other channels!!! Send the damaged items to repair channels and see if they can bring them back to life, or bring them into the studio and work together to resurrect them. Great vid BTW
for people interrested: The USB Killer that austin used, as well as the older versions work by charging up the capacitors using the 5 Volt supplied through the power pins of the usb and then discharging their charge through the Data pins (tho i think the newer ones actually does both) which, most of the times, are less shielded against such an attack than the power pins. Reason why they data pins are most times less shielded is because it is harder to build said shielding for said pins since most inexpensive shielding methods will effect the signal in some way or another which, as you may have guessed, is not a good thing to have on data lines (data loss may be imminent) .
Honestly, great use for the ewaste you've ended up buying in some recent videos, well done. The fact that you're donating to the EFF really means a lot, honest.
Electricity is scary, yo. Few years back I had my laptop hardlined into my router during a thunderstorm. Lightning hit my apartment building, went through my CAT5 and fried my entire motherboard. I wouldn't be surprised if thats what happening here.
you know what changed in few years ( Usb killers only plug in ) - Few years ago to Wireless usb killers to kill that PC or your firend PS5 by an APP ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ like is was honored to become a key to kill off ( safety protocol ) ( from Apple slowing own your phone to Allow random apps that could end a user phone and make them easy to hit because all they has to do now to swiched their usb to theirs killers and send them a kill signal ) ( the one thing that would make safety protocolfor is users become more of a problem because if a phone got access to the killer itself and send out signals to kill a phone or a gaming pc )
The way USB kill works is essentially a camera flash driver from old school point and shoots. Charges via an isolated DC-DC boost converter from 5V to around +200V on D- and then connects D+ to ground. The device sees -200V on D+ which kills the south bridge in most systems (or the whole SoC for mobile systems) Optical isolation goes a long way to protect from failure. Devices that fully or partially survived used this solution. Curious about the GaN Block failure. Maybe it cooked the USB-C signalling to set power capabilities with the cable. Haven't looked at V4, so this might be part of it's enhanced capabilities.
Also with the data recovery, newer apple cpu macbooks are easily prone to death of their ports. If one goes, they all go. They all go through the same IC for charging. I'd love to try to attempt repairing one of these
if the hackers can send signal to the usb killer itself think of the damage it can make happen all the hackers can do is give them a usb that like theirs and plug it in and fry their servers the problem with allowing usb killers to become connected to phone can make them hidden to IT support that never hear of them and think is theirs own usb sicks
The moment you said the Switch I knew it was done for. Nintendo recommends their own AC Adaptors not for sales increase but because, if you get the wrong charger without a particular resistor installed can fry the charge port. A power shunt like that isn't even going to blink while it blows it.
8:02 You need to turn on OTG connection from the phone's settings for any usb c cable to work (Except for the charger). edit: I really hope that you will see this comment and BTW you just got a sub! ;D
I would love to see a dive in to what is being damaged and to what extent on these devices. Curious if anything is salvageable or if the whole system is gone
I would not recommend people buy the USB killer. I got one in 2016-2017 and I've only touched it a handful of times. There are very few reasons and opportunities you're gonna come up with to fry the motherboard of a computer with the USB killer. Maybe you'll do it once or twice, at school, on an old PC, whatever. But after that you'll basically never touch it, and any reason why you might will get you in big trouble. Computers are expensive so you'll quickly reach $1,000 worth of broken electronics, which is a felony. Even without the legal trouble, you'll be hard pressed to find a reason to break it out after it's novelty wears off. Very cool device to have on a shelf though, I'm still happy I bought one.
@UnjustifiedRecs Ik but this is my first time seeing something in action but this instantly breaking someone’s device which costs hundreds but the actual usb costs about £100
Being able to charge and deploy that power makes it finally useful for me. If I have an old piece of technology that died on me, now I could absolutely fry it and make sure I don't have any data leaked. It's a lot easier than pulling the HDD out. I did a test, and if you go to the tip and buy a couple of adaptors, and some old trash computers (hard drives are better, as they have less encryption, but most of the time they are properly dead), you will get a surprising amount of info. I actually sent some of it back to it's original owners, including some precious pictures they thought they had lost!
@@jamielattin9182 I'd be interested to know why this is? I know motherboards are somewhat built to protect hardware from surges, but from my experiences (admittedly both times with a more formidable force - lightning) there was nothing left to salvage from either the SSD/HDD or anything plugged in.
try an SMC reset on the mac's and see if that fixes the issue. Mac automatically shuts off the ports if it detects anything. you have to manually reset them.
There was actually an individual going around my college campus specifically targeting Mac laptops. He destroyed over 30 laptops and was never caught. He/she probably used one of these.
As good as it is to say manufacturers should defend against this attack, I'm just not sure that's feasible to a certain extent. There will always be a high enough voltage to bridge protections momentarily. Plus, if someone has physical access to your device, most security can be bypassed anyway.
Shocking the vast majority of manufacturers seem to not be bothered about how damaging this could be. Shielding is a must! They've known about this type of attack for nigh on a decade now
They know, but they don't really implement protection circuits for usb killers specifically (usually its ESD protection instead) because people generally don't try to destroy things like this. The problem is not "shielding" which is specifically for protection against radio interference, but transient, overvoltage and overcurrent protection.
Shielding and grounding will do jack, since it dumps the payload down the power and data lines. Fuses are probably the best defence, although its sending down a massive voltage not current, so fuses won't work either.
Generally what's happening is you're sending too much amperage to charging IC's or Power IC's. We see it a lot with the galaxy line up in data recovery. Power IC's gettin replaced several times a week
i think the phones worked due to them being charging ports, it makes sense for them to have protection against electrical surges and stuff like that, the others weren't charging ports and all died...
Some electronics have a small component like a resistor that acts as a sacrificial lamb when things like these happen. Just replace the component that is fried on the board.
Latent damage could also be a killer in the long term. I would definitely look at the components on the board after something like this happens. It may even cripple processors after a long time of use after the event.
8:37 I'm amazed how sturdy Android phones are with usb devices. You can pull the cord out while transferring data without ejecting it and the memory will be intact. But this USB killer comfirmed it to me.
The way the macbook died is scariest. No indication that anything is wrong. You come back to your computer and keep working without issue. But go to charge it and nothing.
Wonder if rebooting that MacBook would've changed anything. I have an M1 MacBook 16 that got splashed with water. The ports on the left would not work, but after a restart, they were fine.
Let's go with that follow up video. Curious to see the extent of the damage caused by this device. Thanks Austin.
Mostly fuses I'd imagine.
It's the battery replace it along with the port you plugged it in those devices will be repaired plug that to a regular PC without the CMOS battery your safe 😂
Count me in for an autopsy & repair video as well. I suspect some of the ports may come back to life due to thermal fuses resetting, but for e.g. the MacBook M2 I imagine the controller chip for charging got its guts blown out, as that's a common issue with 3rd-party chargers as well. The Switch probably has the charger chip destroyed as well, which just makes you wonder why they don't all have voltage clamp circuitry on the USB lines. The Z-Flip 3 clearly does, while the iPhone only seems to do fuses.
PS5 will definitely be dead, I've watched a lot of people who try to fix them with broken USB port's and if you're unlucky to cross VCC with the Data + or Data - pins.
The data lines run STRAIGHT into the APU
@@lukedavis436 That's Apple HV-next-to-CPU-signal-lines levels of bad... yeah, in that case there's probably no way that the PS5 will come back without a full APU swap, which means that it's at most a spare parts system.
Too bad there's not an electronics repair TH-cam channel that you could send this stuff to to see if it could be fixed 😉
Kudos!
@Tronicsfix I hope you get better - all the best with your treatments.
I literally just commented that he needs to send you the PS5!
I’ll do the MacBooks
YESSSS BRO!!🔥🔥🔥 DO IT Austin I wanna see this collab vid!!! UPVOTE!!
OPEN THEM UP. OPEN THEM UP. OPEN THEM UP.
Yes
And get louis rossmann to help
Yes PLZ
@@duckgoesquack4514 YES! Louis should be able to look at exactly what gets blown when this thing hits them.
Yes plz
For the devices that stayed alive but had their ports dead (Especially the macbooks), giving them a restart would be a good idea because sometimes, computers turn off the port entirely when it notices something abnormal, and it turns it back on after a restart. Had experience with having ports screwing up on me like that, definitly my fault but, often times a restart solved it.
This exactly, I’ve had users at work short their ports on their MacBooks and a reboot always gets them working again!
Think they said they tried that
@@mdeckert1998 timestamp?
@@cms_samuelat around 15:40 he said he was gonna restart the mac too in case that fixed it, but it apparently didn't
@@Rebnobfulroar only verbal, so maybe he didn't actually restart it? Thanks for timestamp
The USB killer was the first ever video I watched on your channel, wasn't expecting nostalgia to hit me so randomly
same 😂
Woah yeah same 😂
Same😮
+1
same
Internally both USB C ports on the MacBook Air go to the same header on the motherboard which is probably why both ports stoped working
But also the magsafe?
Makes sense
@@bobbyflaydx4062 since USB-C can also provide charging, it can be connected to same circuit as MagSafe for power delivery, so USB Killer load would spread there killing "just" charging capability which we see as "USB-C and MagSafe break".
Also, Austin is wrong at the end when trying keyboard saying "there's no data either" - you don't know if there's no data, as there's no power (due to breakage) to power the dongle and said keyboard.
There are dozens of videos that demonstrate just how much Austin loves the Z Flip but this might be the ultimate example. You could hear the concern in his voice, see it in his face, and you could see the sheer joy when it survived
My Samsung Galaxy Note 5 survived a lightning strike that hit the house. The strike fried an entire circuit in the wall, the outlet on that circuit my phone charger was plugged into, the charger plugged into the Surge Protector, the cable connecting the charger to my phone, but my phone was unscathed.
Other things that didn't survive that strike include: The circuit breaker for that circuit in the breaker box, the surge protector powering my PC, a toaster, the in-sink garbage disposal unit, several lamps and lightbulbs that were turned on at the time, and my step-father's iPhone 5 issued to him by the company he works for as well as the lightning charger it was plugged into.
I told my step-father that it was ironic that the lighting charger couldn't handle the lightning when my Note 5 was just fine, however, so I was rooting for the Z Flip 3 to win.
If there are resettable fuses in those computers/phones, then waiting until the fuses cool down might bring them back to life.
You can also replace fuses/capacitors. Assuming you know a lot about soddering.
you need northridge fix equipment though
MacBooks have the unfortunate habit of having the USB controller chips destroyed when you use third-party chargers, so I imagine the MacBook M2 at least requires that chip to be replaced. Same with the Switch. For other devices (like the first MacBook Pro and Gateway laptop), thermal fuses may kick in, indeed. Would love to see a follow-up & autopsy on these devices to see the actual damage.
You don't need equipment from just Northridge anything works lol, just make sure it's decent-ish
@@MayaPoschthe Switch has 3 chips on the USB side from my knowledge, you have M92T36, BQ and P13USB. If the killer breached all 3 then the Tegra APU is next in line.
Austin: "do not try this at home"
dude who went to jail: **tries at school**
Yes! Open it up and use a multimeter. I wanna see what exactly it's killing.
I agree, I would love to see what broke.
If you're lucky, an inline fuse. At worst, the entire USB controller.
If I'm not wrong the USB killer charges the capacitors inside it up to 220V then sends all that voltage through the data lines on the port.
It can fry whatever uses the data lines, those being the RAM, CPU, GPU, SSD and other parts that require data lines.
If lucky its just a fuse or capacitor. If unlucky its the usb controller or the cpu/pch
Newer Macbooks have a protective function where if an issue is detected when charging it will disable charging until the device is restarted. I'm not saying that the M2 Mac for sure survived with no damage but interested if it still wasn't charging after a restart of the system.
The Z-Flip being the only one to escape unharmed is the twist nobody expected
especially considering they cheap out on the flip models so much
I've read your comment mid video, and now i'm quite sad
Should it have been though? Isn't it like the newest product there? MBA M2 was 2022, Switch 2017, PS5 2020, Iphone SE 2022, and I don't know about the other stuff. I was surprised by the charger though, it should have had some kind of surge protection ability I would think. Or maybe the USB port of such devices just weren't shielded like that, unlike a phone, which would have those kinds of protections since it's also a charge port. Which is why the phones survived. Well the iphone SE not as much, but still.
@@ruekurei88 Z Flip 3 came out in 2021.
Not really. Newer Samsungs are waterproof and the ports have protection again stuff like this
It is not proper grounding of the USB port to prevent this but proper ESD and over voltage protection.
What dies is the chipset that has the USB controller in, its also is responsible for keeping the entire system alive
If you don't know the school where someone used one of these which Austin was talking about, basically this kid used one of these USB killers and he killed about 59 computers and he also killed like around 7 computer monitors and also some other devices. The school was Saint Rose college.
Single handedly contributing to the university shutting down Im sure.
@@Borman18 You are correct my friend. According to a few reports: " the college's trustees voted to close the college in June 2024."
This incident led to the finances of the college to go to shit and therefore the closed the college@@Borman18
@@viharkottakota1849really? They shut the college down because of one bad student?
I don't think it was only because of the student. But he may ave contributed to though right?@@Cyba_IT
Someone at my school had something like these once, they snuck it into school and plugged it into peoples laptops. I got back at my MacBook Pro (2015) had shut down which I found weird, but it powered back up and even accepted a charge!
Samsung did a good job
I'm more partial to the oldschool classic etherkiller, wall power can supply way more joules to the device under test than a little battery.
Yes, please open some of them to see what exactly got zapped and if they can be repaired or better too chuck it.
Rebooting the laptops where just the port died may fix them. I know windows will disable a port if it detects problems before it causes permanent damage.
I'm honestly suprised that the Z Flip 3 survived. Just goes to show that some companies are really trying hard to have their devices as protected as possible against such attacks
Yes, samsung is normally the one to pass this test
What attacks? Devices like this are used to test power surges.
Imagine a manufacturer buying usb killer to test their usb port from usb killer itself😂
That was crazy to actually see the electric shock on the switch lite! Those were some good arcs right where it was plugged in
Perfect collab opportunity with Louis Rossmann!
9:27 Ken: Suck it, JerryRigEverything. Not durable phone my a**!
For the brandnew MB, you might have tried power-cycling it first before declaring that the USB-Cs are no longer accepting a charge.
That way you could have found out if only a breaker triggered or a fuse outright blew.
I wonder would it kill an Electric Car
TechRex tried the USB killer in electric car with USB port and it only fried that port and not the hole car.
@@StuffJason437 that’s still Scary as hell. Good to see that it didn’t fry the car
probably teslas
that’s been done before
but it didn’t kill it i think it just blew a fuse
I think a follow up video would be a good idea, partly to see the damage, but to also see if the damage could be something as simple as a blown fuse somewhere, or if you managed to totally fry something.
I really really want the followup video. Getting to the bottom of this and illustrating what exactly it kills on the board would be great
What a great way to set up colabs with other channels!!! Send the damaged items to repair channels and see if they can bring them back to life, or bring them into the studio and work together to resurrect them. Great vid BTW
As a follow up, send them to northridge fix to see if they can be repaired, or if they are too far gone.
Nah don't send it to Northridge, I think tronicsfix or Louis rossmann is the guy for this job
Northridge would likely not even participate in this
for people interrested: The USB Killer that austin used, as well as the older versions work by charging up the capacitors using the 5 Volt supplied through the power pins of the usb and then discharging their charge through the Data pins (tho i think the newer ones actually does both) which, most of the times, are less shielded against such an attack than the power pins.
Reason why they data pins are most times less shielded is because it is harder to build said shielding for said pins since most inexpensive shielding methods will effect the signal in some way or another which, as you may have guessed, is not a good thing to have on data lines (data loss may be imminent) .
The phones make sense. They are supposed to receive power from there, so it would make sense that it would be protected in case of too much power
Honestly, great use for the ewaste you've ended up buying in some recent videos, well done. The fact that you're donating to the EFF really means a lot, honest.
This is one of those things I feel like someone would use a prank and be confused why their teeth are gone.
I heard you showed up at the new Microcenter!! Didn't get to meet you, but the store is incredible!! Lots to offer!! Thank you for your coming to NC!
Electricity is scary, yo. Few years back I had my laptop hardlined into my router during a thunderstorm. Lightning hit my apartment building, went through my CAT5 and fried my entire motherboard. I wouldn't be surprised if thats what happening here.
The first usb killer was the first video I saw from your channel like 4 years ago. Happy to see a follow up video.
😢 a tear came to my eye seeing the ps5 die
Austin if you do a follow-up, try to remove and read the internal drive, and see if any data survived
Gotta be one of the most painful videos I've ever seen 😭
you know what changed in few years
( Usb killers only plug in ) - Few years ago
to
Wireless usb killers to kill that PC or your firend PS5
by an APP
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
like is was honored to become a key to kill off ( safety protocol )
( from Apple slowing own your phone to Allow random apps that could end a user phone and make them easy to hit because all they has to do now to swiched their usb to theirs killers and send them a kill signal )
( the one thing that would make safety protocolfor is users become more of a problem because if a phone got access to the killer itself and send out signals to kill a phone or a gaming pc )
0:13 well that was a good video, no more info needed bye
"So these might look like normal USBs"
meanwhile the USB kill logo and text on the drive:
"Am I a joke to you?"
The way USB kill works is essentially a camera flash driver from old school point and shoots. Charges via an isolated DC-DC boost converter from 5V to around +200V on D- and then connects D+ to ground. The device sees -200V on D+ which kills the south bridge in most systems (or the whole SoC for mobile systems) Optical isolation goes a long way to protect from failure. Devices that fully or partially survived used this solution.
Curious about the GaN Block failure. Maybe it cooked the USB-C signalling to set power capabilities with the cable. Haven't looked at V4, so this might be part of it's enhanced capabilities.
The USB kill is basically a handheld EMP lol
Its not electromagnetic. Its just a voltage pulse but yeah it fries stuff.
Also with the data recovery, newer apple cpu macbooks are easily prone to death of their ports. If one goes, they all go. They all go through the same IC for charging. I'd love to try to attempt repairing one of these
As someone who doesn’t have these nice gadgets, it really hurt me to watch
Gotta say, this was a ride to go through! I'd definitely be interested to see a follow up and whether any of the dead devices can be restored.
Absolutely do not do this to your work computer to get a couple of days off. 😅😂
if the hackers can send signal to the usb killer itself
think of the damage it can make happen
all the hackers can do is give them a usb that like theirs and plug it in and fry their servers
the problem with allowing usb killers to become connected to phone can make them hidden to IT support that never hear of them and think is theirs own usb sicks
The moment you said the Switch I knew it was done for. Nintendo recommends their own AC Adaptors not for sales increase but because, if you get the wrong charger without a particular resistor installed can fry the charge port. A power shunt like that isn't even going to blink while it blows it.
When can this tech be integrated into my phone, laptop or other device and triggered when stolen?
8:02 You need to turn on OTG connection from the phone's settings for any usb c cable to work (Except for the charger). edit: I really hope that you will see this comment and BTW you just got a sub! ;D
Samsung takes the crown!
I would love to see a dive in to what is being damaged and to what extent on these devices. Curious if anything is salvageable or if the whole system is gone
this proves that Samsung Galaxy is more reliable than iPhone
Why not try the Xbox
The USB Killer shouldn't even be a thing at all
Yeah. have to do a follow up. we need to see inside and see what it actually damages and estimated cost to repair.
I would not recommend people buy the USB killer. I got one in 2016-2017 and I've only touched it a handful of times. There are very few reasons and opportunities you're gonna come up with to fry the motherboard of a computer with the USB killer. Maybe you'll do it once or twice, at school, on an old PC, whatever. But after that you'll basically never touch it, and any reason why you might will get you in big trouble. Computers are expensive so you'll quickly reach $1,000 worth of broken electronics, which is a felony. Even without the legal trouble, you'll be hard pressed to find a reason to break it out after it's novelty wears off. Very cool device to have on a shelf though, I'm still happy I bought one.
This scares me for some reason. Me just thinking someone can just buy this and do this to anyone’s devices is scary. 😳
@UnjustifiedRecs Ik but this is my first time seeing something in action but this instantly breaking someone’s device which costs hundreds but the actual usb costs about £100
Being able to charge and deploy that power makes it finally useful for me. If I have an old piece of technology that died on me, now I could absolutely fry it and make sure I don't have any data leaked. It's a lot easier than pulling the HDD out. I did a test, and if you go to the tip and buy a couple of adaptors, and some old trash computers (hard drives are better, as they have less encryption, but most of the time they are properly dead), you will get a surprising amount of info. I actually sent some of it back to it's original owners, including some precious pictures they thought they had lost!
Bad idea. This doesn't damage the hard drive or SSD. Someone could still take the hard drive or SSD out and access it.
@@jamielattin9182 I'd be interested to know why this is? I know motherboards are somewhat built to protect hardware from surges, but from my experiences (admittedly both times with a more formidable force - lightning) there was nothing left to salvage from either the SSD/HDD or anything plugged in.
Very interesting! Can't wait to see if you will do a follow up video and open all those devices.
The OG USB Killer was my favourite video you made. This was awesome
I didn’t know about this until Austin showed me. Thanks a lot Austin.😊
try an SMC reset on the mac's and see if that fixes the issue. Mac automatically shuts off the ports if it detects anything. you have to manually reset them.
You know what's not illegal? Leaving it in plain site and letting curiosity take its course
There was actually an individual going around my college campus specifically targeting Mac laptops. He destroyed over 30 laptops and was never caught. He/she probably used one of these.
Shame on Dell for not having better circuit protection on a "rugged" laptop
As good as it is to say manufacturers should defend against this attack, I'm just not sure that's feasible to a certain extent. There will always be a high enough voltage to bridge protections momentarily.
Plus, if someone has physical access to your device, most security can be bypassed anyway.
Shocking the vast majority of manufacturers seem to not be bothered about how damaging this could be. Shielding is a must! They've known about this type of attack for nigh on a decade now
They know, but they don't really implement protection circuits for usb killers specifically (usually its ESD protection instead) because people generally don't try to destroy things like this. The problem is not "shielding" which is specifically for protection against radio interference, but transient, overvoltage and overcurrent protection.
I don’t believe the Zflip survived Austin loves his Zflips too much. Used a fake killer lmao
By far the best, most informative videos you guys put out.
Still remember the days when everything apple pro used to do such tests on latest iphone released.
Shielding and grounding will do jack, since it dumps the payload down the power and data lines. Fuses are probably the best defence, although its sending down a massive voltage not current, so fuses won't work either.
I ABSOLUTELY would like to see a followup. I want to see how much this is actually doing to the devices it's killed.
Please make a follow up video on this, I’ve been wondering for a few years what components they actually damage. PLEASE MAKE A FOLLOW UP VIDEO!!!!!
I would love a follow up video on the diagnosis of why these devices get killed
Generally what's happening is you're sending too much amperage to charging IC's or Power IC's. We see it a lot with the galaxy line up in data recovery. Power IC's gettin replaced several times a week
Its sending tons of power into a chip and because a chip has more than a million transistors of a few nanometers those can be easily destroyed
I hate that this only came out 7h ago, because it means I'll have to wait in real-time for the followup video.
Trying to fix them would be interesting for sure
Samsung always uses protection
You should also share this with companies so they can see it and hopefully build something to prevent it
i think the phones worked due to them being charging ports, it makes sense for them to have protection against electrical surges and stuff like that, the others weren't charging ports and all died...
Honestly, badusb is both cooler and scarier than USB killer
Austin used to be so in-depth, now it's like a TikTok video "lEt Me KNow iF yoU WAnt mOrE"
Thank you for donating the value of the destroyed technology, I think that's pretty cool. Educational video too.
Some electronics have a small component like a resistor that acts as a sacrificial lamb when things like these happen. Just replace the component that is fried on the board.
Latent damage could also be a killer in the long term. I would definitely look at the components on the board after something like this happens. It may even cripple processors after a long time of use after the event.
I REMEMBER WATCHING V1 THANK YOU FOR THE NOSTALGIA
Austin Evans is a Zflip truther
There really needs to be more control over the sale of these device.
Fantastic with your donating.
It’s nice that you’ve shown proof that made the donation to eff. And the right amount as well.
I really want to see the followup. It's also pretty scary that this doesnt seem to be a huge priority for companies....
“A wiggle thumbs” Austin Evans 2024
Yeah do a follow up on the results and maybe even take one apart and then plug one in and try to see where it get fried?
Please open them up and explain what happened...would be a great follow-up video!
8:37 I'm amazed how sturdy Android phones are with usb devices. You can pull the cord out while transferring data without ejecting it and the memory will be intact. But this USB killer comfirmed it to me.
The way the macbook died is scariest. No indication that anything is wrong. You come back to your computer and keep working without issue. But go to charge it and nothing.
Wonder if rebooting that MacBook would've changed anything. I have an M1 MacBook 16 that got splashed with water. The ports on the left would not work, but after a restart, they were fine.
definitely want a follow up video, to see what exactly this thing kills