Killer USB stick that destroys your computer in seconds

The USB stick can instantly fry any machine it is plugged into. Photo / habrahabr.ru

Russian hackers have created a USB stick that can instantly destroy any machine it is plugged into.

The USB stick created by a Russian security researcher known as 'Dark Purple' have uploaded a video to YouTube showing the USB in action.

In the video a researcher is seen plugging the USB stick into a working laptop, after a second or two the screen goes black and all attempts to get the laptop working again fail.

The USB destroys laptops by sending 220 volts through the signal lines of the USB interface, rendering anything it is plugging into useless.

The researcher claims that "he will live" and a new motherboard is on the way.

He thinks it is "extremely unlikely" that the hard disk was damaged, and so it should still be possible to access the data stored on the drive.

Dark Purple claim in their Russian-language blog post that the attack is not just limited to computers, but can used to incapacitate almost anything equipped with a USB drive.

Experts say the USB stick highlights the fact users should never plug unknown devices into their machine.

"USB Killer v2.0 - Yet another reason not to plug a USB stick of unknown origin into one of your computers," said Graham Cluley.