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.
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.
@@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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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 )
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
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 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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
@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
Here I am, with literally no gaming devices, basically wishing I owned just an entry level gaming computer. Austin: "Let's jam this USB killer into a PS5". 😢😢😢😢
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.
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 M2 macbook air was not receiving anything because most likely a fuse, or worse: the controller was broken in the process. I know this because I was experimenting with a Intel cooler, a Breadboard and a RP2040-Zero. RP2040-Zero stopped receiving power, and the left side of my laptop's usb ports never worked again. In my case, it was probably a fuse, but it will still be expensive to repair. Stay safe everyone!
If this is the right USB Killer im thinking of, the reason why it can bypass so many protections is because instead of sending power back through the power pins, it sends it straight through the data pins. Some device manufacturers *have* made isolation for the data pins, but a lot have not and instead on those devices the data pins are connected straight to the motherboard and CPU, instantly frying them. Grounding the USB port probably won't work for a USB killer like this one. I know that at least some (maybe most) Apple products have the data pin isolation.
Aaaand the reason you didn't open the dongle is....? FYI it's the first USB killer with no battery. It takes the device's own power (so it must be switched on or the attack fails), massively multiplies it internally (probably via a hoomungous capacitor) and fires it right back, but across the two data lines - very nasty, and not many manufacturers can block many hundreds (maybe thousands?) of volts across two thin copper strips. Dunno how Samsung managed it, hats off to them.
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.
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.
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
It's a standard practice to add TVS diodes on the USB data lines to handle any ESD discharge from humans or clothing, if USB killer only outputs high voltage but low current/energy charge, the TVS should be able to handle it, they don't even cost much like 10 cents so there is no reason for any kind of computer/mobile device not to have it.
