There are a large number of dangers that involve computer systems, and there is a really wide variety of ways that we can use to compromise both the physical and logical integrity of a computer. For this same reason, we must always take a series of precautions with everything that may affect our PCand one of them is clear that it would be related to the physical connections it has, this includes the fact of connect things through USBsuch as a pendrive that we have found on the street.
Many times we may think that a device such as a pendrive may be something harmless, and they are really easy to see anywhere, so finding one on the street may mean that someone has lost it, but this does not It means that it is free from danger.
These are the dangers that a USB that you find lying around can have
Many times we can be tempted to be curious about the contents of a USB that we have found on the street, but it is not even remotely something that we should do, since it can cause a lot of problems. In the best of cases, what can happen is that it has some type of malicious file that our antivirus can block, but at the same time, there are also situations that are much more dangerous since they can cause not only that we lose our data, but directly our PC becomes completely unusable.
A pendrive As we well know, it is a device that allows data to be stored, but this also implies that it can store files malicious such as a virus, which if we are lucky only runs once we start it. There are many ways to hide a virus behind a file that seems legitimate, something that can also be applied within the operating system, managing to hijack a process that is legitimate so that the applications we have to deal with viruses and others cannot reach to detect it, something that would end up being a great danger since depending on the type of malware it is, it could give a cybercriminal full access to our PC.
But as we have indicated before, this is something that can happen in one of the best situations in case it is a malignant pendrive, mainly due to the fact that in another case, it is likely that directly connecting it, it will cause our PC to stop to function. These functions are performed by those known as USB Killerwhich instead of having storage chips are a cluster of capacitors.
Upon connecting to a device, the USB Killer rapidly charges its capacitors from the USB power lines, once the device has charged, a 200V DC discharge is released through the host device’s data lines, and this cycle The loading/unloading process is repeated numerous times per second until the USB Killer is removed, causing it to practically instantly disable unprotected hardware.
