I guess we should also avoid plugging our phone into the USB ports on airplane seats?
FBI is warning people against using public phone-charging stations
11–20 of 328 posts
Re: FBI is warning people against using public phone-charging stations
#12badUSB is what, nearly 20 years old now?
i distinctly remember making usb condoms a long time ago, anyway, and have never trusted public usb slots anyway.
Re: FBI is warning people against using public phone-charging stations
#13I guess we should also avoid plugging our phone into the USB ports on airplane seats?
that should go without saying: yes, you should avoid doing that.
Re: FBI is warning people against using public phone-charging stations
#14This might be a big advantage for wireless charging. Although it can be slower than a USB charger, there is no risk that it will be doing something other than charging.
Firstly, I believe the QI scheme includes a process for communication, mostly restricted to "how much power should I send" for now, but it's obvious this will be expanded to more functionality as people basically replicate NFC over it.
Second, I'm still waiting to see a QI charger than just pumps 100W of power straight through any piece of metal above it. Don't know what would happen, but I naively imagine forced induction would brick most devices.
Re: FBI is warning people against using public phone-charging stations
#15Just in time for the phone vendors having fixed all their USB vulnerabilities?
Re: FBI is warning people against using public phone-charging stations
#16Just FYI: this is referring to USB charging stations, not EV stations. This advice has been standard in cybersecurity training for a long time now and frankly I'm surprised that this is the first time the FBI has felt the need to issue an advisory on the subject.
It is not the first time the FBI has warned about this (see [0] for example, or do a Google search with date filters).
This is the Denver field office maximizing Twitter engagement by repeating themselves. (Maybe that is not a fair way to view it, maybe the FBI should repeat advisories often.)
[0]: https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/portland/news/p...
Re: FBI is warning people against using public phone-charging stations
#17I guess we should also avoid plugging our phone into the USB ports on airplane seats?
The race of media, ad, and other companies for one's attention and data is brutal. Especially when one is stuck in a seat for hours and only has a back of another seat in front of their face.
Re: FBI is warning people against using public phone-charging stations
#18I'v been wondering about the implications of free wifis within airports or such - how much that would be of a worry given you connect only to TLS secured services (and hopefully the phone does it too for every service it connects to in background)
Re: FBI is warning people against using public phone-charging stations
#19This might be a big advantage for wireless charging. Although it can be slower than a USB charger, there is no risk that it will be doing something other than charging.
Firstly, I believe the QI scheme includes a process for communication, mostly restricted to "how much power should I send" for now, but it's obvious this will be expanded to more functionality as people basically replicate NFC over it. Second, I'm still waiting to see a QI charger than just pumps 100W of power straight through any piece of metal above it. Don't know what would happen, but I naively imagine forced ind…
>I'm still waiting to see a QI charger than just pumps 100W of power straight through any piece of metal above it
A charger so good it's the last time you'll need to charge
Re: FBI is warning people against using public phone-charging stations
#20If you have a zero day takeover via usb/lightning why would you waste it on public charging infrastructure? That seems ridiculous.