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Former student destroys 59 university computers using USB Killer device
- mariuolo 8y agoHow do you obtain a MBA while being so stupid?
- SlipperySlope 8y agoOne supposes that compared to mass shooting, its a better way to get your name in the news.
- scotty79 8y agoKnowledge and stupidity are multidimensional and orthogonal.
- joezydeco 8y agoYou need to meet more MBA graduates. The stupidity ratio will astound you.
- acchow 8y agoWhat do you think the qualifications for an MBA are?
- nixgeek 8y agoAbility to pay the tuition fees.
- tonyedgecombe 8y agoWhen did HN become so cynical?
- whenchamenia 8y agoAfter we paid tuition fees.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- stadeschuldt 8y agoI am looking at https://usbkill.com/ https://usbkill.com/. What is the purpose of the device? The manufacturer calls it an "ESD tester" yet there is an "anonymous" version available: https://usbkill.com/products/usb-killer-v3?variant=44776085642 https://usbkill.com/products/usb-killer-v3?variant=447760856...
- yial 8y agoThey bill it for “pen testers and police” so I would guess it’s really for people who imagine themselves / want to be within that audience. Not to be overly cynical. I suppose some pen testers, or actual CIA type folks might have some need of this type of device... but is that a large enough market?
- stadeschuldt 8y agoI don't buy the pen testing part. I might as well sell a hammer and call it a pen testing device. Funny enough they have the following on their website: "A hammer used maliciously can permanently damage to a third party's device. The USB Killer, used maliciously, can permanently damage a third party's device." Contrary to this device a hammer can be used a useful tool too.
- phire 8y agoIt's designed to prove a point. To prove that USB devices can be malicious. It's probably most useful as an education tool, training staff not to plug random USB devices they find lying around the parking lot into their computers.
- ALittleLight 8y agoI would think a USB containing an info graphic about the dangers of plugging in random USBs is a far more efficient education tool than one that destroys the hardware of your staff. Worse, what if they took it home and used it on a personal device?
- 8y ago
- wodenokoto 8y agoAny word on motive?
- hprotagonist 8y agoFebruary-ish is normally acceptance letter time, but it doesn't make sense. He'd already graduated, and nobody get an MBA and then applies for further graduate study.
- gruez 8y agoMaybe for the lulz/attention? The pdf says that he recorded himself doing it with his phone.
- hprotagonist 8y agoLong ago, I worked for my uni's departmental IT group. We made our own etherkiller, hung it on the wall with a sign "USE IN CASE OF SUN". Never used it in anger, but it was fun to dream about...
- mackal 8y agoIn one class we we're building a custom circuit to talk to a custom 8-bit computer over the ISA bus. I accidentally put one chip upside down (it was some off brand and I mistook a scuff on one end for the marker for which way is up) and killed the DOS PC :P The custom 8-bit computer was fine though.
- Gibbon1 8y agoClassic was inserting an old 16k DRAM backwards. Hmm... something smells hot... touch touch touch sound of screaming
- gattilorenz 8y agoOr inverting the two halves of the AT power connector
- Gibbon1 8y agoAlways a bit terrifying powering up the MB for the first time.
- jwilk 8y ago> USE IN CASE OF SUN What does it mean?
- vortico 8y agoSun Microsystems maybe?
- chronolitus 8y ago
- colorincorrect 8y agoCan someone tell me what would happen if you plug this onto a USB charger via an adaptor that is plugged to 220V AC?
- wl 8y agoQuite possibly nothing. A USB charger following the USB Battery Charging Specification has a resistor < 200Ω across D+ and D-. Just putting -200 V on D- and doing nothing to D+, there's not a completed circuit. If the charger uses the data lines for anything (e.g. Apple devices), perhaps it'd burn out whatever microcontroller is running things in the charger.
- Causality1 8y agoI completely understand the desire to do this. Universities do things that make you want to obliterate them with a meteor. What I don't understand is recording yourself committing a crime.
- tyingq 8y agoCollege of St Rose lists their tuition as $29,826/yr. So he did about 2 tuition years of damage. I wonder if he was worked up about student loan debt.
- 1024core 8y agoI'm guessing he's a rich kid from India, with rich parents who are bankrolling his education. I hope he gets the full 10 years. Nothing like the US Penitentiary System to teach you a lesson.
- wetpaws 8y agoIt's just a piece of plastic. Very intricate, relatively expensive silly plastic. You are demanding blood and to trade off a huge chunk of human life for the silly piece of machinery (which he gonna pay fore anyway), are you feeling well, my friend?
- veryworried 8y agoIt’s not about the computers. This individual has demonstrated he has no regard or respect for others property, and may very well go on to commit other more serious crimes if he gets away easily with this one. Others may also feel encouraged to imitate what he did if there are no serious repercussions.
- netsharc 8y agoThe great thing is, he also flushed his future down the drain, at least outside of India (every visa application in the world asks you about past criminal convictions). Or to use a more apt metaphor, he zapped his future into smoke.
- jussij 8y agoThe reason I think this is going to result in jail time, is this is not just one or two isolated incidents. But instead the 59 incidents make this a willful act of vandalism.
- morpheuskafka 8y agoThe USB killer isn't really needed if your going to do it yourself and leave evidence. The use case would be to give it to someone else, or do it once in a reasonable manner and claim ignorance.
- _xerxes_ 8y ago*You're
- tyingq 8y agoThe school did a Q&A with him on FB, apparently long before the incident: https://facebook.com/saintrosegrad/posts/10154835183318203 https://facebook.com/saintrosegrad/posts/10154835183318203
- flashman 8y ago> how long before it disappears a while: http://web.archive.org/web/20190419041118/https://m.facebook.com/saintrosegrad/posts/10154835183318203 http://web.archive.org/web/20190419041118/https://m.facebook...
- laretluval 8y agoAlmost enough.
- everyone 8y agoSomeone brought this up in an older thread about this device.. Why use this? You could just use a hammer, or pour water into them. It seems bizarre that he paid money for this device when there are many completely free ways to trash a pc.
- ascorbic 8y agoI assume someone would notice if he started smashing up computers with a hammer. No way he'd be able to destroy as many.
- vonseel 8y agoI imagine it’s much easier psychologically for a vandal to do this than anything obvious with a hammer or water. Also, you would think he’d probably get caught after the first or second monitor if he walked into a library and started smashing shit.
- everyone 8y agoYeah good points, I guess it is fairly discreet + also its novel so most people may not cog what hes doing very quickly. Is there not a pretty intense burning smell from the fried components though? .. So, its extremely situational. Use when you want to trash some running pc's in an occupied public area and not have people notice immediately maybe.
- rhn_mk1 8y agoWhy can vandalism result in a prison term? I'd expect paying damages is a sufficient punishment for stupidity. Genuinely curious why the consequences are structured this way.
- Hydraulix989 8y agoDeterrence. To some, the damages are pocket change.
- tluyben2 8y agoWhen we (Dutch) ask in school why our sentences are so low, it is explained that if the punishment does not fit the crime, you will be incentivized to add more crime because you are already facing prison time, so why would you care about a few years more or less. Aka if the crime for rape is almost the same as murder you might as well kill the victim to have less chance of being caught. We have not a lot of crime and people who commit crimes like this come out of it as long term productive citizens: if you go to jail, what exactly are you doing/deterring? He will never have a normal life because of some stupid thing he did? Do like (i think) scandinavia and swiss; make fines fit the economical status of the perpetrator. Edit; me and my friends did dumb things when young, not quite this dumb, but enough, if tried as adult, for prison time in the US possibly and caning+prison in for instance Singapore ; what exactly would that have done? We are all highly successful tax payers and it was foolishness that occured once or twice, 30 years ago.
- malignantCancer 8y agoWe have a lot of malignant individuals in the United States, at a young age, in public schools, we see some truly obnoxious sociopathic kids. Bullying, hazing, things that really aren't okay at all. It's not cute pranks. It's more akin to psychological warfare. They don't care about punishment. They don't care about fairness. They're operating their game to assert dominance, and it has nothing to do with participation in a community. You give them things and they spit in your face. You cut them a break and they smirk, and go back to operating their game. It's a sort of tribal warfare that you can't account for with reason and enlightenment. They're a bottomless pit of empty, materialistic status symbols, and this cross section of people fucks it up for anyone with a mind to negotiate fair play and reciprocation. You can sit there on the other side of the pond, look down your nose and say "tisk tisk" but you aren't living here, you didn't grow up with what we see around here, and you don't know what it's like on the ground, face to face, here in our society. It's kind of awful, and I can't tell you how many times I've looked at the behavior of other people and just wished for a way to make them disappear. Fire, dungeons, tornados, who cares? Fix the problem by erasing them, permanently, because the idea of suffering their noise for even another year is it's own prison for people who've done no crime except have a terrible neighbor.
- sdfsdfsdfsdf3 8y agoMost decent (read: non-american) long haul airlines and even some 737 have USB sockets at each seat for charging devices, what effect would this have in the air?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- alexcnwy 8y agogood question! I have wondered about this when plugging my phone in and being asked “do you trust this computer?”
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- bukka 8y agoAll Inflight Entertainment Systems are completely isolated. You'll fry your own screen, enjoy the rest of your flight.
- sdfsdfsdfsdf3 8y agoWoudln't that be a fire harzard?
- bukka 8y agoMaybe "fry" was the wrong word to use here. The USB device mentioned in the article doesn't work after it kills the device so the components actually don't get too hot after the initial surge. Also any battery on your device is also a potential fire hazard. There are procedures in place to deal with such cases.
- bukka 8y agoThe device was bought on a website that advertises it as an "ESD tester". Couldn't the student blame this on false advertising?
- talonx 8y agoAnd then he tested it on 59 different computers, just to make sure it works?
- agumonkey 8y agothere used to be a thing called usb condom https://duckduckgo.com/?q=usb+condom&atb=v119-3__&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=usb+condom&atb=v119-3__&ia=web to cut data lines altogether IIRC I guess we need a new kind of condom with all lines protected for surges ps: there are also these https://www.alibaba.com/countrysearch/CN/usb+isolation+module.html?fsb=y&IndexArea=product_en&CatId=&SearchText=usb+isolation+module&isGalleryList=G https://www.alibaba.com/countrysearch/CN/usb+isolation+modul...
- Rudi9719 8y agoWhere did he think that was a good idea?
- pvaldes 8y agoWannabe criminals are getting dumber day by day. Is a fact. Fifty years ago the idea of doing something ilegal whereas filming yourself smiling to your own camera, would tag you as martian. Currently all is like: look at me; I'm badass!! I'm a malote!! I want to rub shoulders with the bad guys!!. Hem... Nope, you are an idiot.
- mosselman 8y ago"He faces up to ten years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000" That is crazy. He is obviously not completely 100% in the head and needs psychological help not imprisonment.
- golergka 8y agoIsn't such decision supposed to be a court ruling? I don't think that persecution can suggest psychological help in US court system.
- binarymax 8y agoI think you meant to say prosecution. But persecution sounds fitting here because exactly the problem you state: mental health needs more awareness and application for people who suffer from these problems. Putting them in jail is the worst thing for everyone.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- skazka16 8y agoWow!! I was the one who not intentionally popularized USB Killer. It happened 4 years ago. I owned a website, where I published translations of articles and one of them was about USB Killer. The article[1] was #1 on Hacker News[2] for several hours and made it viral on all major online publications. What I saw next was crazy. People around the world started to experiment trying to re-create the device - youtube videos, articles, blog posts, etc. I received a ton of mails with clarifying questions about the circuit board and so on, but I had zero clue how it all worked, since I simply translated the original[3] article from Russian. And then someone finally recreated this USB and the whole thing became a little market. Niche websites started to sell it and the device was a lucrative product for youtube kids to make their videos more fun. Wow.. [1] https://kukuruku.co/post/usb-killer/ https://kukuruku.co/post/usb-killer/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9176195 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9176195 [3] https://habr.com/en/post/251451/ https://habr.com/en/post/251451/
- codedokode 8y agoMaybe the student thought that it was a normal flash drive and tried to find a working computer that can open it? Also, isn't ten years too much for just destroying a property? It's not like anyone got hurt.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago>Also, isn't ten years too much for just destroying a property? It's not like anyone got hurt. The (unspoken) point is to send a message of deterrence. Be a thorn in the side of important institutions and they will screw you hard.
- ttsda 8y agoFrom the article: > "I'm going to kill this guy," "it's dead," and "it's gone. Boom," Akuthota said on recordings obtained by the prosecution.
- roel_v 8y agoWhat is a "computer-enhanced podium"? Why would I ever plug a usb stick into a podium?
- codedokode 8y agoBecause it has an USB socket.
- thejrk_ 8y agoWe have some. They are podium's that have built-in computers or some just have touch monitors and you supply the computer. They all have USB extensions so you don't have to dick around behind the thing to plug USB in.
- binarymax 8y agoLikely just a podium with a dedicated laptop already connected to and optimized for the A/V system. Allows you to put a powerpoint on a USB and stick it into the machine and present from that, rather than messing with dongles and cords and A/V compatibility.
- virtuexru 8y ago> According to court documents obtained by ZDNet, and the suspect, Vishwanath Akuthota, 27, filmed himself while destroying some of the computers. Never understood why people film their own crimes?
- vraivroo 8y agoTo show their shitbird criminal buddies and giggle over?
- Simulacra 8y agoSome people are issued devices like these by their employers…