A daughter decided to play a “prank” on her father by installing a USB killer in his car: Now the entire electrical system of the car is allegedly ruined. This is reported by the father, who describes the situation on Reddit.
What does the father report? A user reports on Reddit that his daughter wanted to prank him. In English, he uses the word “prank.”
He explained that he had been listening to music via a USB stick, but his daughter replaced that memory stick with a USB killer. USB killers are devices that connect via the USB port and then destroy the device with increased voltage if there is insufficient overvoltage protection.
He himself writes about it:
Now the entire electrical system of the car is broken (all lights on the dashboard are on and the engine refuses to start) and to make things worse – fuses were intact.
You can’t verify it 100%, as the original post has been deleted, but it can still be accessed via digital archiving (via Archive.is). The user profile has also been deleted by now. The deletion itself cannot be verified, it only says on Reddit that “This post has been removed by Reddit’s filters.”
Is there any chance for the car? Yes, some users recommend in the community that the owner should remove the battery for a few minutes and then reconnect it. Then the control unit in the car, briefly ECU (short for “electronic control unit”), gets a chance to restart. In the best case, only the USB port and the radio are damaged, but not the rest of the vehicle.
Can you really destroy a car with a USB killer?
What are USB killers? A USB killer is a device that looks like a regular USB stick but contains capacitors that generate high voltage and discharge it abruptly over the data lines of the USB port. Generally, such devices are compatible not only with computers but with all devices that have a USB port.
Can they damage cars? Yes, according to a technical article on Securityaffairs.com, such a killer can also be used on a modern car: The circuits in current vehicles that have USB ports (for example infotainment, diagnostics, or charging ports) can be permanently damaged by a USB killer if no special protection is implemented.
The destruction usually affects the main board or the control unit behind the USB port. In cars, this can mean that the infotainment system, USB charging functions, or even central control units fail if they are interconnected. Whether safety-critical systems are also affected depends on the specific vehicle architecture and how strongly the electronic systems are interconnected. In the worst case, there is a total loss of the vehicle.
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