this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
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[–] [email protected] 37 points 4 days ago (17 children)

Depends if the phone is supposed to still work.

If you just take an empty shell it shouldn't be hard at all to put an USB killer inside.

If you want to keep a functional phone, that's very difficult. You'd likely have to reduce the size of the battery by half to free some space and then design a custom USB killer to fit into that space. And then you need some kind of switch to switch between regular USB usage and USB killer mode. Or you just hard-wire it to USB killer only and charge your phone exclusively with wireless charging.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (10 children)

You have piqued my curiosity. I was imagining a non-functioning device with the sole purpose of hampering USB/devices. Like if I were to, conduct research, I would probably just have the insides filled with sand or something to give it heft or the illusion of being a real phone.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 days ago (4 children)

For a non-functioning one it's quite simple. There are dummy phones for most models that are to be used in e.g. store displays. You can get those for ~€5-10 on ebay. They are just a shell and nothing else. Alternatively you can just take an old phone and remove all the content, though the dummy will have more space inside, since you'll have to leave the screen in if you take an old phone.

Then you need an USB killer. You can find them on the usual online shops. You'll need to find one that is as flat as possible, the other dimensions don't really matter.

This is now the only somewhat tricky part: You will need to remove the USB port from the USB killer (unless it already comes with an USB C port), take an USB C socket (there are ones on a small breakout PCB), solder the socket to the killer and mount the socket inside the dummy/phone in a way that it sits at the right place and can easily be used without falling off.

I would not use sand to make the phone heavy, as it's probably not that easily contained and it would also not be quite as easy to make it not flow around and sound like a salt shaker. Instead use fishing weights and glue them into the case.

Now, don't forget, this is all hypothetical. Nobody's going to ever, ever build anything like that, and I wouldn't have ever told anyone how to do this if I thought that anyone would do it.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Not hypothetical. For real world application. The police deserve it for illegally searching your phone.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

You’re saying the quiet part out loud. We want to leave some room for… CYA.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

Yes exactly. Since we’re off reddit, we won’t be censored for advocating legitimate political protest.

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