‘Juice Jacking’ Criminals Use Public USB Chargers to Steal Data
da.co.la.ca.us
da.co.la.ca.us
Edit: those devices seem to be only for USB 2 type A connections. Anyone know of other format "condoms" eg mini-A or type 3?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juice_jacking
Adafruit's website sells a lot of cables[2], including
* An A extender blocking data with a switch to turn power on and off
* An A to micro-B blocking data with a switch to turn power on and off
* An A that splits to mini-B blocking data and micro-B allowing data
* A micro-B extender splitter where one side has only power and the other side has power and data
* An A extender that always allows power and has a switch to turn data on and off
* An A to micro-B that always allows power and has a switch to turn data on and off
* An A to triple splitter of lightning with data and power, 30pin iPhone/iPod with only power, and micro-B with only power
There are other similar cables[3]. Note that naively disabling data will sometimes disable fast charging. Some data-blocking cables themselves re-implement or allow fast charging.
I thought essentially no one uses mini-A or micro-A, so I don't know why you would want that. I thought USB 3 was just about faster data. If a cable always blocks data, then I don't see any use for USB 3.
[1] https://portablepowersupplies.co.uk/home/micro-usb-data-bloc...
[2] https://www.adafruit.com/category/142
[3] https://www.newegg.com/multi-color-monoprice-4-50-ft-usb-cab...
Presumably, if fernly wants a mini-A, it's because they do use it and that's why they want it. USB 3, I would assume USB-C was meant, and that becomes an issue of plug shape.
But why do USB devices even accept unauthorised data at all? There's probably a good reason for it that I don't understand, but it seems to me it's rather obvious that blindly accepting data from unknown devices is quite a big security risk. And yet I keep seeing these new data port standards (USB, thunderbolt, etc) that just blindly trust whatever gets connected to it, and allow it unreasonable control over the device. I guess the reason is that you want to be able to plug a new keyboard into your PC and have it just work.
Or maybe the user just shouldn't give physical access to devices that are not trusted.
As for not giving physical access...easier said than done. Looking around, I see multiple such devices lying around here, with the owner within 20 m, but not paying attention. IMNSHO asking for authorization is far more logical than assuming "whoever can get their hands on it is authorized."
A proper usb condom has some smarts which acts as a middleman, that only passes traffic relating to power negotiation.
Juice jacking, USB condoms and what not. Sometimes I feel we need more funny sounding names across the tech industry.
Does it emulate a keyboard or something like that?
With how horrible phone makers are at updating things I would not be surprised if there was a significant number of old android versions hanging around.
Lacking any technical details, this article reads like one of those scary chain forwards.
Amusingly, the video starts with the same exact music that I use to put my kids to sleep at night. It's used in one of the more popular sleep music videos on YouTube. I just thought this was pretty funny. Ideally a municipality would arrange for some music standards and source something that's not also usable by a random video publisher like that...
I think you vastly overestimate the amount of thought that goes into things like this. Also, I don't think such level of detail is a good use of (finite) resources.
Please give one example on planet Earth where this has happened.
If you can't do this, please name how it would be done.
IE what devices it would work on and what data you would take? Specific, what versions of Android does it work on?
Not a generic I'll take all your "banking data" magic BS, is it actually possible to access my banking data? Where is it stored and can your thing access it?
If you need to open up the public device in the airport and install your thing, please say this.
Since you could also put a small IED in there, it might be tricky. Al Qaeda probably would pay you more than some stolen bank data you can buy off a open web hacker forum.
Also can anyone comment on how feasible defenses are against outlet power hacking at say a hotel? Is there any tool under $100 available to the masses? $200?
Hotels supply mains power. The parts of your computer that deal with data are well separated from the parts that deal with hundreds of volts.
Why would a bad actor bother searching for greener pastures?
Both Android and iOS have protections against this kind of attack, I would be really interested to hear the technical nature of how these work - either there is some bizarrely widespread 0 day exploit in all these chargers, this attack primarily affects old devices, or this article is primarily bait.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/tens-of-thous...
I recently selected a charge chip for a work project that took care of the negotiation, so I can’t quite remember the details but it was something I had to pay attention to, and definitely needed to layout the board to use the data lines even though we don’t take data in.
https://datasheets.maximintegrated.com/en/ds/MAX8895V-MAX889...
(The ancient Xperia I had did report with a different USB ID and device class when in charge-only mode, but it did obviously communicate over data, at least as far as enumerating its endpoints.)
Even if USB debugging is enabled the user has to manually accept the RSA host key for any debug access to occur.