Would this be difficult to actually put together? Asking as a mostly casual user of technology and of course for purely academic purposes.
this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
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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.
USB-C has a lot of pins, some custom built cable could use nonstandard pins for power and data and the standard data ones for the 20kV line.
Or just run the 20kV line on the data pins and leave power standard. That way you can use a power-only cable to charge the phone.
The pins are quite close to each other, wouldn't 20kV just jump between them?
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Or you just hard-wire it to USB killer only and charge your phone exclusively with wireless charging.
That feels really insightful.
Saw this post earlier and was cranking some brain cycles in kinda the same way you were. My brain settled on a switch for the USB since you should just need a 5 pole/2 throw switch (think I'm using those terms correctly?) to go from regular USB function to kill mode. I think for my own peace of mind, I'd want it to be 3 throw though (normal, completely unconnected, and kill). My brain then went to the battery, which I see as the real design constraint.
Then I got to thinking about building it into a phone case. The case would need to plug in to your phone's USB port, then have an additional external connection; it would be this connection that is switched into normal/nothing/kill mode. Cases can be pretty bulky, so tucking a battery into there would be easier and still maybe evade detection.
All that said, I think I like your idea better.
Edit: spelling
Edit 2: additional thought: if you went with the case, you'd want to have it really difficult to remove. Like, requiring undoing some screws, especially if you can get some torx or other niche screw head design (bonus points for mix and matched screw heads).
My thoughts on that are that even if the case is identified as having a false port on it, it would be so difficult to remove that the "adversary" just plugs their info stealer into it anyway.
The USB killer doesn't need a battery of its own. It charges capacitors from the USB supply voltage and then spikes a high-voltage discharge into the USB power pins. So you'd only need to change the battery to a smaller one to give you space for the USB killer. The battery is the only component on your phone that's reasonably easy to shrink while still retaining the phone's functionality (though obviously with reduced battery capacity).
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.
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.
Not hypothetical. For real world application. The police deserve it for illegally searching your phone.
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FYI the word is “piqued.”
This "mistake" is becoming common enough that I'm starting to treat peak as an alternative form of pique
Good looking out! Corrected.
Honestly, just pack something with a USB port, and no descriptor. No labels, no nothing. Hell, make it out of a little hobby box container and put a port on it. Done.
Some dumb ass will plug it in to see what it is.
Remember, police have a maximum intelligence limit for hiring, or so its rumored, and if you've dealt with many cops, well.... seems pretty fair.
Intelligent people ask questions. Fascism doesn't like people asking questions.
Should leave some spicy USB devices near ICE buildings
I would like to actually use something like this on the police because they deserve it for illegally attempting to search my phone.
Just saw the mentaloutlaw video. Graphene OS has a “duress pin” that wipes the phone when given a certain pin.
fun fact, in the UK the offence is “failing to decrypt the device when required to do so” making these measures quite dangerous.
That said, unless you are being charged under a national security crime, the maximum sentence for “failing to decrypt the device when required to do so” is up to two years, so the game’s the game.
Wow the UK is a turd too.
Yeah, go to the UK and say "I support Palestine Action" and see what happens. They're having a rough time of it right now.
I always thought that they were a worse police state than the US. Cameras everywhere, jail time for letter openers and keychain swords let alone fucking knives. Absolutely a lack of free speech. US has the camps now do we’re definitely worse atm but the UK hates being free.
You know about brexit right? Turd move right before the US went full turd on Trump a few months later.
Russian troll farms paid off big at that point.
I wonder how they'd look at it if previous cracking attempts wiped the device. Is that "failure" to unlock punishable or not? The phone was wiped already - the user can't unlock it even if he wanted to.
Similarily, is it possible to make it impossible to prove the device was wiped due to the PIN and not beforehand?
I had the same question. The best would be to consult a lawyer and see if there's any precedent already set.
I could imagine police could easily film the process and a video would be enough proof for any judge. The phone shows a pin entry, a reboot, and then a welcome screen just like a factory reset has been done. Right?
I thought of it as two seperate problems:
The first one is legal - if the person asked to surrender credentials surrenders them, and the device turns out to be reset (assuming no foul play), does this constitute the crime of not surrendering the credentials?
If the answer to one is "yes", the technological question begs itself: How to make a duress pin indistinguishable from the real one?
What the fuck. When are you required to do so?
I still dont know if i would trust Google hardware. Call me paranoid but what are the chances of mentaloutlaw beeing a psyop "get this very specific hardware and software setup so the police cant hack you" sounds a lot like encrochat.
Have a read up on GrapheneOS, they seem like they take their shit very seriously and their product is pretty solid (though their communications are a bit... "opinionated"). And yes, it is an amusing irony that the most secure devices are made by Google.
There is also an app called duress if you don't have graphene
For awareness you can achieve the same on CalyxOS by setting it to automatically wipe the phone after either 5 or 10 failed unlock attempts. Though this does mean a child (or childish friend) could do it accidentally. I'd prefer a duress PIN, but then I'd probably forget it if I ever really needed it.
There's also a less nuclear 'panic trigger', that allows you to hide apps or choose to uninstall any apps you like. No PIN needed, simply hold the power button and select 'Panic Trigger', there's then a fullscreen 5 second countdown before your select private/sensitive data is obliterated.. unless you hit cancel. The user can set up in advance what the panic trigger does - eg which apps to uninstall (deleting their data and auth keys), all cloud provider apps with sensitive data such as email apps or cloud storage provider apps are recommended.
For the duress PIN, an easy way to remember it would be to reverse your regular PIN
1111
You’re right, that is easy to remember!
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Electrifying idea
Intriguingly so.
I have a broken phone with failed glue lying around. Might be a fun weekend project. Is it still destruction of property if you tell them beforehand that your phone will fry their device?
Edit: Well, not fully broken, but the parts to fix it properly cost more than the device. Even though it has a midrange snapdragon and 12 gigs of ram, 256 gigs of storage. Might try to find out whether there's any way to connect the board to a generic screen, but I'd wager there isn't. Really love the mobile device market.
Edit edit: We're getting really off-topic now, but looks like that board used a MIPI DSI connector, I think? Seems like it is standardised enough that it might be possible to source a generic screen and use it kinda like a sbc? Getting that to work might be the actual fun weekend project hiding here.
unreasonable search and seizure might cover that.
Luckily, I'm not in the US, so that doesn't really apply. But I might look up the relevant laws around here at some point.
Is this funky looking police tablet a real thing, and if so, what exactly is it doing?
It is a real thing and they are produced by a company called Cellebrite. They are used in digital forensics. So if they get your phone confiscated or whatever, they can plug the funky looking police tablet and hack it.
Can always rely on Israel for surveillance tech
“Digital Forensics”
Not offensive cyber warfare against US Citizens
It's real! It has a dozen different plugs for different phone models, and it can make a dump of the physical memory of the device, allowing you to read messages, files etc... without having to unlock it.
I used to work for a PI who used it, he was an incompetent piece of shit but the tech was fun to play with.
I just had this thought today lol. Either that or loading some malware onto the phone that executes on USB connection.
This person edited their comment.
They originally were talking about giving immigrants moving to the United States USB killer devices in order to unknowingly trick ICE officials.
+++
They get caught with them, fry an ICE machine (as you intended) and get deported to a concentration camp.
Congratulations.
Let’s not use people as a means to an end.
Aren't the people ICE kidnaps being deported to concentration camps regardless? So the frying of an ICE machine is purely a value-added service.
Not always from what I can see. But I guarantee that it will always happen if you sabotage ICE equipment.
Sabotaging ICE equipment is a moral act. But I think you should not use people as a means to do so.
I mean, this is just general patriotism I think
Very "Don't tread on me."
Imagine dropping USBs in different shells and handing them out to migrants
Wow. And we mock metal nutsacks on pickups.
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