You can short-circuit basically anything with exposed contacts and a paper clip. This isn’t specific to Chromebooks.
Pretty much any device with a USB port can be catastrophically short-circuited, because most USB ports are capable of supplying some amount of power. You can even buy “USB Killers”, which look like a thumb drive but will fry the internals of whatever they get plugged into.
IIRC USB killers work because they’re sustained high voltage. USB ports can often deal with a static discharge or over current, but a sustained 200 volts will let the magic smoke out.
They do make special shielding for USB and other ports, but most manufacturers don’t use them because generally people aren’t going to stick foreign objects into their computer for internet points.
Often times, those “public chargers” you sometimes see in airports and such have that shielding installed on the ports (though you should never use public USB ports to charge your devices, for a dozen other reasons).
You can short-circuit basically anything with exposed contacts and a paper clip. This isn’t specific to Chromebooks.
Pretty much any device with a USB port can be catastrophically short-circuited, because most USB ports are capable of supplying some amount of power. You can even buy “USB Killers”, which look like a thumb drive but will fry the internals of whatever they get plugged into.
IIRC USB killers work because they’re sustained high voltage. USB ports can often deal with a static discharge or over current, but a sustained 200 volts will let the magic smoke out.
I guess I just assumed there was some way to protect against it but I don’t know anything about electronics.
They do make special shielding for USB and other ports, but most manufacturers don’t use them because generally people aren’t going to stick foreign objects into their computer for internet points.
Often times, those “public chargers” you sometimes see in airports and such have that shielding installed on the ports (though you should never use public USB ports to charge your devices, for a dozen other reasons).
USB condom works for public chargers. It’s called a “usb data blocker” and goes for under $10
Don’t you need to manually approve data transmission through USB?
In an ideal situation, yes. Not all devices even do this and when they do, there is the whole concept of hacking.