USBKill 3 is a USB flash drive capable of destroying any computer in seconds: instead of storage space it hides capacitors
If a friend of yours sneaks up on your computer with a USB flash drive in his hand, start worrying. Maybe he wants to play a dirty trick on you and "fry" your computer. All it takes is a pendrive - suitably modified - to mess up the internal circuits of electronic devices and make them unserviceable.
Specifically, the flash drive is called USBkill, it made its first appearance in 2015 and today it has reached its third "version". But what's so special about this flash drive compared to a regular pendrive? First of all, it has no Flash memory and cannot be used to store data. Al posto dei moduli di memoria ci sono dei condensatori pronti a scaricare l’energia accumulata nei circuiti del dispositivo connesso e bruciarli. Nel senso letterale della parola. In questo modo il computer sarà inservibile, dal momento che i collegamenti tra CPU, RAM e altre componenti interne saranno saltati.
Non solo computer
I produttori di questa chiavetta USB hanno da poco realizzato anche una serie di adattatori per collegare USBkill anche a dispositivi mobili. Disponibile sia in formato USB type C e formato Lightning, permettono di collegare la pendrive a smartphone e tablet Android oppure ad iPhone e iPad. Anche in questo caso, per i dispositivi c’è ben poco da fare: nel giro di pochi secondi i circuiti interni saranno distrutti e i dispositivi mobili non saranno più utilizzabili. Same for cars with USB flash drive input and any other device equipped with this type of port (such as game consoles): USBkill doesn't look anyone in the face (browse the photogallery to see how USBKill 3 works).
Macs apparently immune
According to what the creators of USBkill say, their killer flash drive has a very high efficiency. From the tests conducted in the lab it turns out that the pendrive can destroy about 95% of the devices to which it is connected. The only ones who are immune are the latest generation Apple computers. With their circuits, the charge and discharge cycles of the pendrive's capacitors have no effect. In short, if you have a broken Mac, USBkill can't be blamed.