[HN Gopher] The Etherkiller and Friends (2002)
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The Etherkiller and Friends (2002)
Author : mmastrac
Score : 59 points
Date : 2022-09-16 15:21 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.fiftythree.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.fiftythree.org)
| exmadscientist wrote:
| Have the commenters here extolling the virtues of these
| "obliterators" actually built one? Because they don't do much.
| Younger me made one ~20 years ago (actually around the time this
| page first came out!) and was very disappointed in how little it
| really did. Nothing happened to the hated DSL modem I wished
| destroyed! So what gives? It took me a while to figure it out,
| but these days I'm a professional EE and I have some insight....
|
| Turns out the magnetics on an Ethernet port are good at their
| jobs. Like, _really_ good. Not quite telecoms lightning-strike-
| survival good, but up there. Mains 60Hz may as well be DC as far
| as these things are concerned, and they 're explicitly designed
| to block DC. Sure, for some configurations of magnetics you can
| blow them up if you get the pin connections _just right_ , but
| that requires you to do a lot more than just "connect the
| transmit pins of the RJ-45 to HOT on 110VAC and the recieve pins
| to Common". Because that doesn't work. And even when it does
| work, it just overheats and pops the magnetics, opening them.
| Nothing happens inside the device proper.
|
| If you want to cause some real fun you need a hi-pot tester plus
| a ground bonder. Those can do things that shouldn't happen.
| humanistbot wrote:
| > If you want to cause some real fun you need a hi-pot tester
| plus a ground bonder. Those can do things that shouldn't
| happen.
|
| You posted this knowing someone would beg you to say more,
| right? What a tease. Fine. Say more.
| exmadscientist wrote:
| I mean, it's 5,000 volts at 100mA for the "high current" hi-
| pot or 20,000 volts at 10mA for the "high voltage" one or 40A
| AC @ 8V AC for the ground bonder. They do about what you'd
| expect: components pop, things arc, things arc _a lot_ at
| 20kV, things smoke and then melt if you shove 40A through
| them.
|
| It's more interesting when you break the tester itself. But
| then you have to fix the tester. These are not complicated
| machines (they're basically just transformers)... there's
| some complexity in regulating the outputs and more in making
| the measurements but most of the hard stuff is in having the
| tester itself survive the horrid abuse it's visiting on
| everything else around it.
| jrockway wrote:
| A friend and I made one of these in high school and plugged it
| into everything we could find because we were complete idiots.
| Literally nothing broke. My iMac Rev B's CRT did go crazy while
| the device was plugged into the Ethernet port, but everything
| was fine afterwards. Why would I try to break my only computer?
| I have no fucking clue. Kids are dumb.
| bluedino wrote:
| I fried a device or two plugging a T1 into the ethernet ports.
| I didn't think they'd be protected from 120V
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| I lost two Ethernet ports a few months ago from a lightning
| strike on a neighboring house. The devices still work otherwise
| and other Ethernet ports connected to the switch were unharmed.
| They were both on a PoE switch which may have been partially at
| fault (though it still works too).
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _The Etherkiller (2002)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8431936 - Oct 2014 (44
| comments)
| mmastrac wrote:
| The video linked from the old thread is golden!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3_gnnz6Bkw
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| I'd be curious to hear comments of the safety taken in this
| video, other than the obvious do not do this at home.
|
| I would assume avoiding touching the Ethernet cable after
| power was attached to avoid touching potentially melting
| wire?
|
| Are there any mitigating factors?
| geocrasher wrote:
| Ah yes, the Etherkiller. I built one once, but never had the guts
| to actually use it. I was quite worried about setting something
| on fire :D
| anonymousiam wrote:
| They left this one off the list: https://usbkill.com/
| alexvoda wrote:
| These are not merely killers, these are death ray obliterators.
|
| I mean, compared to the humble USB Killer (which was inspired by
| the Etherkiller), this has a lot more oomph.
| exmadscientist wrote:
| In practice, the USB killer is much, much more destructive
| because USB is DC coupled and it doesn't have to overcome any
| protection magnetics.
| xani_ wrote:
| In well designed USB port you'd at least have diodes shorting
| it to ground/vcc.
|
| But they are designed for ESD protection, so while high
| voltage, not that much energy
|
| The problem is that there is no fuses, while ethernet
| basically have transformer working as a fuse, USBkiller can
| hammer the protection diodes till they burn out and then the
| rest of it gets it.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Always great to come across a website like this that's still
| online. Takes me back to the good old days of the Internet.
| nelsondev wrote:
| Haha. I first thought this was a custom device for Ethernet over
| Power lines.
|
| For example, https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-AV600-Powerline-
| Ethernet-Adap...
| weeeeelp wrote:
| Certainly some features are common between the two, like the
| power saving one - albeit it's permanent.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| "Now Localtalk is really local."
| jabbany wrote:
| Kind of curious about this actually.
|
| IIRC ethernet cable side is only magnetically coupled to the
| port/device side via small transformers. So running DC would
| probably just melt the cable or transformers but is not really
| likely to damage the device side (? Not actually sure about
| this).
|
| But in this case it runs mains AC.. so... Do we expect the cable
| to blow first due to the high current, saving the device, or do
| would we expect the brief period of AC would cause enough induced
| current on the device side to also fry that?
| xani_ wrote:
| Well ,first off, in POE powered devices it is connected to
| device, and I'd imagine in many cases (of being cheap) it would
| be directly coupled to device.
|
| > So running DC would probably just melt the cable or
| transformers but is not really likely to damage the device side
| (? Not actually sure about this).
|
| A _step_ of voltage, whether that 's just turning on AC on top
| of the cycle or just pushing DC thru it would go thru the
| transformer in form of short spike.
|
| So sure, looking at random transformer data they are protected
| to like 1000Vrms so it wouldn't jump thru isolation, but
| initial magnetic spike might, and then it is up to any surge
| protection on the other side to ground that
|
| > But in this case it runs mains AC.. so... Do we expect the
| cable to blow first due to the high current, saving the device,
| or do would we expect the brief period of AC would cause enough
| induced current on the device side to also fry that?
|
| I'd guess transformer would be the highest resistance/area
| thing in the chain so it would melt first.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Depending on the implementation, but most probably it would
| burn the coils ("transformer") in the port, and probably the
| whole port module around, since the energies are high enough to
| burn quite a large chunk of material.
|
| Cables are a lot thicker than the electronics inside the port
| itself, so my bet would be, port goes first, probably fails in
| a way that disconnects the current, if not, the ethernet cable
| would probably compete with the circut breaker on who melts
| first (circut breakers, even if they're marked with (eg.) 20A
| on them, survive a much higher current for a short time, before
| they eventually fail, due to some electronics, especially
| motors and large lightbulbs act almost like a short circut when
| they're starting up).
| neilv wrote:
| IIRC, the Bastard Operator From Hell (BOFH) had one of these
| cables in '90s.
| mgdlbp wrote:
| https://www.cs.umanitoba.ca/~djc/asr/ (immortalized at
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Asr-coa-na.svg)
|
| http://www.faqs.org/faqs/sysadmin-recovery/
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(page generated 2022-09-16 23:01 UTC)