
The Etherkiller (2002) - martin_
http://www.fiftythree.org/etherkiller/
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gcb0
*smugly slap suspenders

amateurs. that is no more fun than a hammer.

what is beautiful is adding a relay triggered by data passing trhu. everything
will work until one string is typed on telnet or a certain site is accessed.
and more importantly, with the user in the middle of something.

that is art.

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roywiggins
I mean really all you need to show is the picture:
[http://www.fiftythree.org/etherkiller/img/etherkiller.jpg](http://www.fiftythree.org/etherkiller/img/etherkiller.jpg)

My favorite though is the etherkiller hub, which is just diabolical.

~~~
kefka
It's just "Power over Ethernet"....

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3_gnnz6Bkw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3_gnnz6Bkw)

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nocman
Am I the only one that doesn't find this the least bit funny? It just seems
stupid to me.

~~~
jmt7les
Nope, this is one of the dumbest things I've seen. It's not even clever...

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tkinom
Funny.

This remind of story I heard about how to destroy a PC with Floppy/CD drive
long time ago.

Grind match stick into powder carefully, mix with lipstick oil, spread to
Floppy/CD and insert it into a system.

~~~
crygin
I still have a 3.5" floppy disk that a friend of mine made in middle school in
which he replaced the magnetic medium with a sheet of black fine-grit
sandpaper. I don't think anyone ever used it, fortunately.

~~~
danielweber
"Emergency Boot Disk"

~~~
tonyplee
New meaning to "formating".

p.s: I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.

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Roboprog
Love it. My first thought was "this is old, and I've seen it 10 years ago".
But they have added a few things. Love the devices for "assuring" the telco
that they do indeed have a problem :-)

~~~
dfox
The V.35 killer will only fry equipment at your end of the line. For telco-
style copper circuits, voltages around 110V are essentially within normal
operational conditions ("correct" analog ringing signal has about 120V peaks)
and voltages around 250V are fault conditions that are expected and protected
against (most of the hardware on line card from large phone switch is for
detection of and protection from various faults on the wires).

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norswap
What exactly does it kill? Does it fry the whole circuit or does it simply
prevent any form of ethernet connectivity while plugged in?

~~~
tbrownaw
Any long-distance-capable wired networking will have electrical isolation
requirements, so that connecting systems that have different ground voltages
won't melt anything (this can apparently be a serious concern if you're
networking outside a single building).

So, the worst it _should_ do is fry the network-facing side of the isolation
part, and b0rk your network card.

...it looks like ethernet in particular mandates magnetic (rather than
optical) isolation. So there's at least a possible mechanism for feeding too
much AC power across the isolator, even if I'd expect the losses from trying
to stuff such a low frequency (60 Hz) thru a component designed for MHz to
make it rather harmless.

I'd guess that feeding in much higher frequency power (say, around 1 MHz)
would be much more likely to do interesting things than would the near-DC
coming out of the wall.

~~~
userbinator
Indeed, here is a typical schematic of an Ethernet interface:

[http://www.micro-examples.com/pics/094-EP2-ETHERNET-
schemati...](http://www.micro-examples.com/pics/094-EP2-ETHERNET-
schematic.png)

So the part that's likely to get fried by excessive current is the isolating
transformer, if mains is applied across either of the RX/TX pairs. If it's
applied between one RX and one TX, then unless the insulation breaks down
there is unlikely to be any current flow - and the isolation transformers are
rated to 1.5kV as per the spec, so 120V or 240V won't do it. The 2kV cap for
the TX ground reference also stops any current from flowing that way.

I wonder if there's market for NICs with fuses or other protective circuitry
on the inputs...

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idlewords
We need a wifi version of this.

~~~
srcmap
microwave ovens without the cage? :-)

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cbd1984
Contemplated as early as 1987:
[http://yarchive.net/risks/network_fry.html](http://yarchive.net/risks/network_fry.html)

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acd
I always conceived connecting a tazer to inject high voltage electricity to
ethernet ports would be the ultimate fun. Try protecting that with your
firewall.

~~~
13
I don't think that would do much. Ethernet is designed for low voltages so you
would arc across almost every connector type (for example, RJ45 pins) before
the power actually got anywhere.

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quotemstr
I actually built one of these. I've never had the guts to actually use it
though; it just hangs on my wall and looms.

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IshKebab
I don't get it... He's deliberately destroying equipment? And possibly killing
people? Is it meant to be funny?

~~~
idlewords
It is meant to be funny. It's unlikely that he's killing very many people with
it.

~~~
Mandatum
If he was in NZ where its 230-240V you might get a bit more punch, but the Hz
is less.

~~~
girvo
I was accidentally zapped by NZ mains once, when I was a teenager. That hurt.

~~~
femto
When my Dad worked in a power station, one of his colleagues got blasted by
66,000V, directly from a multi-megawatt generator. Severe burns, but he lived.
That's quite amazing, given the low impedance of the source.

The scariest situation I've been in is doing measurements on the live busbars
at the entry point of a skyscraper. The electrical cabinet contained a wall
full of uninsulated high-voltage gear emitting an ominous 100Hz hum, as the
bus bars vibrated in the EM fields. All I could think of was "don't fall
forwards".

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pdonis
I always wondered where the BOFH went...

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teddyh
Despite its technological demeanor, we should recognize this for what it is –
an act of destruction for destruction’s sake alone – pure savagery. It seems
to me that society has better places for this than in its technologists and IT
infrastructure.

