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FBI is warning people against using public phone-charging stations

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Re: FBI is warning people against using public phone-charging stations

#291
post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know I don’t but surely some people do perhaps hacker news is merely a conversation prompt aggregator

HN as a separate entity has practically no value, it could just be reddit.com/r/hackernews and it'd be practically the same.

The thing about Reddit is that it has greater "discoverability" through search, profiles and algorithmic "hot" pages, so communities like that inevitably become swamped with low quality posts. There's a few niche subs that just degenerated into posting photos of purchases that arrived in the mail today instead of actually discussing the use of the tools.

Re: FBI is warning people against using public phone-charging stations

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Less serious than tampering with fixtures in a secure area at an American international airport?

I would imagine that leaving a charger plugged in to a public outlet is not as interesting as you have presented it to be. Sure, you would be leaving evidence, but if your plan works, that evidence won't be sought out anyway. If you sent a mysterious package, it wouldn't be strange or out-of-character for someone to investigate that package intentionally: which presents a significant attack surface for the discovery…

Here's what you do without leaving obvious chargers dangling out of outlets. You don't need to even send a guy in a maintenance uniform out to the site, or tamper with installed equipment.

You're a decently high-capacity Chinese factory that makes custom USB outlets. You make a "special" line with a zero-day chip or firmware inline with a cable. The cable only needs to be a little fatter to accommodate some unobtrusive electronics. They are slid under the insulation and there is no dedicated PCB that may attract scrutiny.

You wait until the order comes in for the site(s) you wish to target, and you ship them off.

The countermove to this, of course, is that the installer does a fuzz test of the charging station with a few common devices, trying to tickle the bug, and also a protocol analyzer that will inspect the USB data stream for anything out of the ordinary.

My armchair quarterback mind says that the above security testing should be fairly effective if you are dealing with a low-level adversary. A state-sponsored one with sufficiently large enough state would not be hindered by puny countermeasures like that, and would be able to target more accurately.

Here's another countermeasure on the consumer level: optocoupling. This is good to mitigate voltage and amperage damage, even accidental or unintentional types. I suppose it would prevent charging too, but there's got to be something useful about it.

Re: FBI is warning people against using public phone-charging stations

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I was in the hospital waiting room recently and they had a charging station with each type of available cable. I charged me phone, fully aware of these sorts of issues. I just went with my gut instinct that, in that environment, it's highly unlikely that the cables have been "trojanized". The FBI can warn about it, but what can you really do? You just have to trust your judgement as to what you feel are safe cha…

> but what can you really do? Get a USB condom, for instance, practice safer charging. :)

Android asks me if I want to have a device to allow access, This probably prevents attacks against the upper layer protocols. Is the risk vector here the USB stack itself?

I think its possible to disable the USB 'protocol' in Linux, but it would require advanced permissions on android, which probably doesn't work out of the box, with IOS who knows or cares.

Re: FBI is warning people against using public phone-charging stations

#294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>(Though, yeah, I'd avoid a lot of "normal" activities if I ever attended BlackHat.) I wonder whether you‘d take similar precautions on a site named Hacker News

A website would be hard pressed to emulate a keyboard plugged into my computer.

You say that now.

Wait till someone reprograms that arduino plugged into your USB via webUSB to be a HID device to do their bidding !

Re: FBI is warning people against using public phone-charging stations

#295
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of these are necessary, except half of #2. All you'd need is a "middleman" device that is subtle enough to avoid notice by the person plugging in, just like how credit card skimmers work. > 1. The station has to be using USB Ports / Charging cables that are data enabled, not just cables that carry power Doesn't matter, because you're (unwittingly) plugging into the attacker's device, not the station's. > 2. The…

> They'll plug in the phone, unlock it, and browse the internet. iOS devices (maybe Android too, idk) ask you if you want to allow new accessories to access your device. That's why they said you need an exploit.

If you attack the right part of the USB stack, the prompt and its answer dont matter.

Re: FBI is warning people against using public phone-charging stations

#296
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people, including many people on this site (and, yes, including myself) wouldn't think twice about plugging into an available port if they need a charge. Maybe I don't plug into an unlabeled port in some random location where it doesn't look like it belongs, but honestly I wouldn't think twice about charging at a designated area at a conference. (Though, yeah, I'd avoid a lot of "normal" activities if I ever att…

Yes, I was in the hospital waiting room recently and they had a charging station with each type of available cable. I charged me phone, fully aware of these sorts of issues. I just went with my gut instinct that, in that environment, it's highly unlikely that the cables have been "trojanized". The FBI can warn about it, but what can you really do? You just have to trust your judgement as to what you feel are safe cha…

Get a tiny GaN USB-C charger, throw it in your bag, and forget about the public "charging ports"?

I bought like 5 of these, threw them in my bags and luggage, and I don't worry about charging like ever. And my devices charge fast.

If I'm doing long flights, I generally bring a single power brick.

Re: FBI is warning people against using public phone-charging stations

#297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you've spent any time on here you know that no one actually clicks the links to read the article. Users need only trust the pages with an orange header.

I don't trust orange headers, only blue ones.

grin

Re: FBI is warning people against using public phone-charging stations

#298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe the assertion is "just because you don't know ow how to do it doesn't mean it can't be done." Okay, but tell me how it can be done if you want me to take the threat seriously. You could also say “always store your phone in a sound-isolating container because attackers can hack your phone with ultrasonics.”

> Okay, but tell me how it can be done if you want me to take the threat seriously. That is not a precautionary attitude. I don't know how a candle left unattended in the middle of my granite counter island could light anything on fire, there aren't any drapes near it, but I'm not going to leave it unattended so I can find out.

Indeed, I’m explicitly rejecting the precautionary principle.

Re: FBI is warning people against using public phone-charging stations

#299

Anker batteries come in a zillion sizes, are cheap and are safe to plug into public chargers. With how hungry phones are these days, I don't know how people live without portable batteries.

It is almost impossible to drain my iPhone to 0 unless I am doing something really unhealthy, like staring at it for 10 hours. I take a charger with me on trips so I can charge over night, but otherwise.. it's literally not possible in my reasonable life to run my phone out of juice. Back when I used android, it was much more common that runaway apps would drain my phone in 2 hours. But now? Doing a anker battery wou…

Ditto. I haven't took a spare charger with me on my last few (city) trips. I just charge in the hotel and it lasts all day.

Re: FBI is warning people against using public phone-charging stations

#300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would totally work on me. My wife is always buying USB cables from amazon, IDK what we do with them all.

Hard learned fact: USB cables are consumables, just like ink or toner for your printer. They need to be refilled every so often.

It's a real shame that the USB standards creators didn't work harder on error-proofing and longevity.

If I were on the standards committee, I would have made every pin interchangeable - ie. any pin can be gnd, any pin can be Vbus, any pin for data, etc. When plugged in, the device on the end would test every pin, and then decide which to use for data and which to use for power.

That way, when a cable gets a bit old and 3 out of 30 pins are shorted or dirty or otherwise bad, the cable works but simply delivers 90% of the power it used to.

The absolute cheapest cables could have just 2 pins, and would be slow and low power, but still fully 'working'.

This wouldn't have added much cost to most devices either - most devices have a dedicated IC for USB functionality, and that IC can deal with muxing signals and power. On devices which only take power, a simple array of diodes can take power from any pin. Data signals could be capacitively coupled, meaning the muxing could be done on a single chip without needing special high voltage silicon processes (the cost of a chip goes up a lot as soon as you want it to deal with high voltages on any pin).

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