Self-Destructing USB Tool Heats Your Flash Drive To Over 100C To Lock Your Data Down

Around the world, countries are plagued with oppression, corruption, and misguided leadership that journalists and ethical hackers are trying to fight. However, keeping data safe from prying eyes can be difficult in some of these places with restrictive laws and invasive policies in place. Despite this, though, people like Ryan Walker of Interrupt Labs are still looking to help with creative ideas like USB drives that only work with certain methods and have the capability to self-destruct themselves.

Ovrdrive is a secure USB creation from Interrupt Labs that, when plugged in, appears as a broken drive. If plugged in three times rapidly, it will only then show its data thanks to some clever circuitry. The journey to invention of this technology originally began back in 2022 with the concept of a self-destructing USB drive that was only openable if you licked your fingers. The premise behind this, rather odd method of access, was that wet fingers have a lower resistance than dry fingers, which could be measured by electrodes in the drive, thus letting the user in.


While this project seems to have been completed, it also eventually morphed into the Overdrive USB system, which is a lot simpler to use and certainly more hygienic. The one holdover from the old system was the self-destruction circuitry, which is turned off by default and can be enabled through the use of the open-source hardware and software and information published to GitHub. If you do enable it, it overvolts the device and gets it heated up to 100C which eventually causes catastrophic failure and data loss. However, if you aren’t interested in tinkering with it and just using the default three-times plugging option, you can back the project for $69 on CrowdSupply and get yourself one of these drives soon.

As previously mentioned, this project could prove to be incredibly useful for hackers, journalists, and others worried about having their data compromised. It is mentioned in some of Walker’s content that encryption may not be allowed everywhere, or it might be inferred you are guilty of something if you have encrypted content. As such, it was necessary to build in a physical measure that adds an extra layer of obfuscation to protect people. With this in mind, this is not a replacement for encryption but something that should be used in conjunction with it.

At the end of the day, this is a very interesting project that is now coming to fruition, and can be used for the purposes of good in the right hands, or perhaps nefarious acts too of course.