5 ms·

The Etherkiller and Friends (2002)

70 points by mmastrac 4y ago

dang 4y ago
Related: The Etherkiller (2002) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8431936 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8431936 - Oct 2014 (44 comments)
- mmastrac 4y ago
  The video linked from the old thread is golden! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3_gnnz6Bkw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3_gnnz6Bkw
  - hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago
    I’d be curious to hear comments of the safety taken in this video, other than the obvious do not do this at home. I would assume avoiding touching the Ethernet cable after power was attached to avoid touching potentially melting wire? Are there any mitigating factors?
nelsondev 4y ago
Haha. I first thought this was a custom device for Ethernet over Power lines. For example, https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-AV600-Powerline-Ethernet-Adapter/dp/B00AWRUICG https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-AV600-Powerline-Ethernet-Adap...
- weeeeelp 4y ago
  Certainly some features are common between the two, like the power saving one - albeit it's permanent.
alexvoda 4y ago
These are not merely killers, these are death ray obliterators. I mean, compared to the humble USB Killer (which was inspired by the Etherkiller), this has a lot more oomph.
- exmadscientist 4y ago
  In practice, the USB killer is much, much more destructive because USB is DC coupled and it doesn't have to overcome any protection magnetics.
  - xani_ 4y ago
    In well designed USB port you'd at least have diodes shorting it to ground/vcc. But they are designed for ESD protection, so while high voltage, not that much energy The problem is that there is no fuses, while ethernet basically have transformer working as a fuse, USBkiller can hammer the protection diodes till they burn out and then the rest of it gets it.
geocrasher 4y ago
Ah yes, the Etherkiller. I built one once, but never had the guts to actually use it. I was quite worried about setting something on fire :D
jabbany 4y ago
Kind of curious about this actually. IIRC ethernet cable side is only magnetically coupled to the port/device side via small transformers. So running DC would probably just melt the cable or transformers but is not really likely to damage the device side (? Not actually sure about this). But in this case it runs mains AC.. so... Do we expect the cable to blow first due to the high current, saving the device, or do would we expect the brief period of AC would cause enough induced current on the device side to also fry that?
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago
  Depending on the implementation, but most probably it would burn the coils ("transformer") in the port, and probably the whole port module around, since the energies are high enough to burn quite a large chunk of material. Cables are a lot thicker than the electronics inside the port itself, so my bet would be, port goes first, probably fails in a way that disconnects the current, if not, the ethernet cable would probably compete with the circut breaker on who melts first (circut breakers, even if they're marked with (eg.) 20A on them, survive a much higher current for a short time, before they eventually fail, due to some electronics, especially motors and large lightbulbs act almost like a short circut when they're starting up).
- xani_ 4y ago
  Well ,first off, in POE powered devices it is connected to device, and I'd imagine in many cases (of being cheap) it would be directly coupled to device. > So running DC would probably just melt the cable or transformers but is not really likely to damage the device side (? Not actually sure about this). A step of voltage, whether that's just turning on AC on top of the cycle or just pushing DC thru it would go thru the transformer in form of short spike. So sure, looking at random transformer data they are protected to like 1000Vrms so it wouldn't jump thru isolation, but initial magnetic spike might, and then it is up to any surge protection on the other side to ground that > But in this case it runs mains AC.. so... Do we expect the cable to blow first due to the high current, saving the device, or do would we expect the brief period of AC would cause enough induced current on the device side to also fry that? I'd guess transformer would be the highest resistance/area thing in the chain so it would melt first.
exmadscientist 4y ago
Have the commenters here extolling the virtues of these "obliterators" actually built one? Because they don't do much. Younger me made one ~20 years ago (actually around the time this page first came out!) and was very disappointed in how little it really did. Nothing happened to the hated DSL modem I wished destroyed! So what gives? It took me a while to figure it out, but these days I'm a professional EE and I have some insight.... Turns out the magnetics on an Ethernet port are good at their jobs. Like, really good. Not quite telecoms lightning-strike-survival good, but up there. Mains 60Hz may as well be DC as far as these things are concerned, and they're explicitly designed to block DC. Sure, for some configurations of magnetics you can blow them up if you get the pin connections just right, but that requires you to do a lot more than just "connect the transmit pins of the RJ-45 to HOT on 110VAC and the recieve pins to Common". Because that doesn't work. And even when it does work, it just overheats and pops the magnetics, opening them. Nothing happens inside the device proper. If you want to cause some real fun you need a hi-pot tester plus a ground bonder. Those can do things that shouldn't happen.
- humanistbot 4y ago
  > If you want to cause some real fun you need a hi-pot tester plus a ground bonder. Those can do things that shouldn't happen. You posted this knowing someone would beg you to say more, right? What a tease. Fine. Say more.
  - exmadscientist 4y ago
    I mean, it's 5,000 volts at 100mA for the "high current" hi-pot or 20,000 volts at 10mA for the "high voltage" one or 40A AC @ 8V AC for the ground bonder. They do about what you'd expect: components pop, things arc, things arc a lot at 20kV, things smoke and then melt if you shove 40A through them. It's more interesting when you break the tester itself. But then you have to fix the tester. These are not complicated machines (they're basically just transformers)... there's some complexity in regulating the outputs and more in making the measurements but most of the hard stuff is in having the tester itself survive the horrid abuse it's visiting on everything else around it.
- 4y ago
NotYourLawyer 4y ago
Always great to come across a website like this that’s still online. Takes me back to the good old days of the Internet.
anonymousiam 4y ago
They left this one off the list: https://usbkill.com/ https://usbkill.com/
neilv 4y ago
IIRC, the Bastard Operator From Hell (BOFH) had one of these cables in '90s.
- mgdlbp 4y ago
  https://www.cs.umanitoba.ca/~djc/asr/ https://www.cs.umanitoba.ca/~djc/asr/ (immortalized at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Asr-coa-na.svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Asr-coa-na.svg) http://www.faqs.org/faqs/sysadmin-recovery/ http://www.faqs.org/faqs/sysadmin-recovery/
ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
"Now Localtalk is really local."
pazimzadeh 4y ago
Is this clique bait? It should be labelled EthernetKiller.
- isatty 4y ago
  Why? Because of the crypto currency? This things been around way before that is timeless.

70 points by mmastrac 4y ago

dang 4y ago

Related: The Etherkiller (2002) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8431936 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8431936 - Oct 2014 (44 comments)

mmastrac 4y ago
The video linked from the old thread is golden! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3_gnnz6Bkw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3_gnnz6Bkw
- hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago
  I’d be curious to hear comments of the safety taken in this video, other than the obvious do not do this at home. I would assume avoiding touching the Ethernet cable after power was attached to avoid touching potentially melting wire? Are there any mitigating factors?

nelsondev 4y ago

Haha. I first thought this was a custom device for Ethernet over Power lines. For example, https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-AV600-Powerline-Ethernet-Adapter/dp/B00AWRUICG https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-AV600-Powerline-Ethernet-Adap...

weeeeelp 4y ago
Certainly some features are common between the two, like the power saving one - albeit it's permanent.

alexvoda 4y ago

These are not merely killers, these are death ray obliterators. I mean, compared to the humble USB Killer (which was inspired by the Etherkiller), this has a lot more oomph.

exmadscientist 4y ago
In practice, the USB killer is much, much more destructive because USB is DC coupled and it doesn't have to overcome any protection magnetics.
- xani_ 4y ago
  In well designed USB port you'd at least have diodes shorting it to ground/vcc. But they are designed for ESD protection, so while high voltage, not that much energy The problem is that there is no fuses, while ethernet basically have transformer working as a fuse, USBkiller can hammer the protection diodes till they burn out and then the rest of it gets it.

geocrasher 4y ago

Ah yes, the Etherkiller. I built one once, but never had the guts to actually use it. I was quite worried about setting something on fire :D

jabbany 4y ago

Kind of curious about this actually. IIRC ethernet cable side is only magnetically coupled to the port/device side via small transformers. So running DC would probably just melt the cable or transformers but is not really likely to damage the device side (? Not actually sure about this). But in this case it runs mains AC.. so... Do we expect the cable to blow first due to the high current, saving the device, or do would we expect the brief period of AC would cause enough induced current on the device side to also fry that?

ajsnigrutin 4y ago
Depending on the implementation, but most probably it would burn the coils ("transformer") in the port, and probably the whole port module around, since the energies are high enough to burn quite a large chunk of material. Cables are a lot thicker than the electronics inside the port itself, so my bet would be, port goes first, probably fails in a way that disconnects the current, if not, the ethernet cable would probably compete with the circut breaker on who melts first (circut breakers, even if they're marked with (eg.) 20A on them, survive a much higher current for a short time, before they eventually fail, due to some electronics, especially motors and large lightbulbs act almost like a short circut when they're starting up).
xani_ 4y ago
Well ,first off, in POE powered devices it is connected to device, and I'd imagine in many cases (of being cheap) it would be directly coupled to device. > So running DC would probably just melt the cable or transformers but is not really likely to damage the device side (? Not actually sure about this). A step of voltage, whether that's just turning on AC on top of the cycle or just pushing DC thru it would go thru the transformer in form of short spike. So sure, looking at random transformer data they are protected to like 1000Vrms so it wouldn't jump thru isolation, but initial magnetic spike might, and then it is up to any surge protection on the other side to ground that > But in this case it runs mains AC.. so... Do we expect the cable to blow first due to the high current, saving the device, or do would we expect the brief period of AC would cause enough induced current on the device side to also fry that? I'd guess transformer would be the highest resistance/area thing in the chain so it would melt first.

exmadscientist 4y ago

Have the commenters here extolling the virtues of these "obliterators" actually built one? Because they don't do much. Younger me made one ~20 years ago (actually around the time this page first came out!) and was very disappointed in how little it really did. Nothing happened to the hated DSL modem I wished destroyed! So what gives? It took me a while to figure it out, but these days I'm a professional EE and I have some insight.... Turns out the magnetics on an Ethernet port are good at their jobs. Like, really good. Not quite telecoms lightning-strike-survival good, but up there. Mains 60Hz may as well be DC as far as these things are concerned, and they're explicitly designed to block DC. Sure, for some configurations of magnetics you can blow them up if you get the pin connections just right, but that requires you to do a lot more than just "connect the transmit pins of the RJ-45 to HOT on 110VAC and the recieve pins to Common". Because that doesn't work. And even when it does work, it just overheats and pops the magnetics, opening them. Nothing happens inside the device proper. If you want to cause some real fun you need a hi-pot tester plus a ground bonder. Those can do things that shouldn't happen.

humanistbot 4y ago
> If you want to cause some real fun you need a hi-pot tester plus a ground bonder. Those can do things that shouldn't happen. You posted this knowing someone would beg you to say more, right? What a tease. Fine. Say more.
- exmadscientist 4y ago
  I mean, it's 5,000 volts at 100mA for the "high current" hi-pot or 20,000 volts at 10mA for the "high voltage" one or 40A AC @ 8V AC for the ground bonder. They do about what you'd expect: components pop, things arc, things arc a lot at 20kV, things smoke and then melt if you shove 40A through them. It's more interesting when you break the tester itself. But then you have to fix the tester. These are not complicated machines (they're basically just transformers)... there's some complexity in regulating the outputs and more in making the measurements but most of the hard stuff is in having the tester itself survive the horrid abuse it's visiting on everything else around it.
4y ago

NotYourLawyer 4y ago

Always great to come across a website like this that’s still online. Takes me back to the good old days of the Internet.

anonymousiam 4y ago

They left this one off the list: https://usbkill.com/ https://usbkill.com/

neilv 4y ago

IIRC, the Bastard Operator From Hell (BOFH) had one of these cables in '90s.

mgdlbp 4y ago
https://www.cs.umanitoba.ca/~djc/asr/ https://www.cs.umanitoba.ca/~djc/asr/ (immortalized at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Asr-coa-na.svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Asr-coa-na.svg) http://www.faqs.org/faqs/sysadmin-recovery/ http://www.faqs.org/faqs/sysadmin-recovery/

ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago

"Now Localtalk is really local."

pazimzadeh 4y ago

Is this clique bait? It should be labelled EthernetKiller.

isatty 4y ago
Why? Because of the crypto currency? This things been around way before that is timeless.