How can a public USB charging station be manipulated by criminals to put a virus on my phone?
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The USB identifies itself to your phone as a keyboard and issues commands to the phone like a keyboard would to download the virus and install itself.
The cable in reality should only be connected to a power source for charging. Phone is plugged in, it charges. But imagine someone tampers with it and connects the other end to a hidden computer. Now you’re plugging your phone into a malicious computer. Possibilities are endless. There’s also tools like the zomg cable that don’t need to be connected to a computer at all. The cable itself is malicious as there’s a small computer chip in it.
The cable in reality should only be connected to a power source for charging. Phone is plugged in, it charges. But imagine someone tampers with it and connects the other end to a hidden computer. Now you’re plugging your phone into a malicious computer. Possibilities are endless. There’s also tools like the zomg cable that don’t need to be connected to a computer at all. The cable itself is malicious as there’s a small computer chip in it.
The cable in reality should only be connected to a power source for charging. Phone is plugged in, it charges. But imagine someone tampers with it and connects the other end to a hidden computer. Now you’re plugging your phone into a malicious computer. Possibilities are endless. There’s also tools like the zomg cable that don’t need to be connected to a computer at all. The cable itself is malicious as there’s a small computer chip in it.
The U in USB means Universal because you can have nearly any connection or device use USB. That means in order for your PC to communicate with the USB device it needs to identify what it does(storage, sound output etc) and might need to install special drivers for that. If you plug in a USB mouse in a windows PC it will download and install a generic mouse(HID human input device) driver that can deal with what the USB is sending and translate it to mouse movements. These drivers are from certified windows servers and tested for malware, so its kot likeley to get malware that way, but not impossible ether.
So USB does a lot of magic in the background, but gettig malware from that is still super hard and more a state founded hacker level and not something a random kid in a basement is going to develop. But i guess you ask this because some US secret service released a warning?
The USB identifies itself to your phone as a keyboard and issues commands to the phone like a keyboard would to download the virus and install itself.
The USB identifies itself to your phone as a keyboard and issues commands to the phone like a keyboard would to download the virus and install itself.
The U in USB means Universal because you can have nearly any connection or device use USB. That means in order for your PC to communicate with the USB device it needs to identify what it does(storage, sound output etc) and might need to install special drivers for that. If you plug in a USB mouse in a windows PC it will download and install a generic mouse(HID human input device) driver that can deal with what the USB is sending and translate it to mouse movements. These drivers are from certified windows servers and tested for malware, so its kot likeley to get malware that way, but not impossible ether.
So USB does a lot of magic in the background, but gettig malware from that is still super hard and more a state founded hacker level and not something a random kid in a basement is going to develop. But i guess you ask this because some US secret service released a warning?
The U in USB means Universal because you can have nearly any connection or device use USB. That means in order for your PC to communicate with the USB device it needs to identify what it does(storage, sound output etc) and might need to install special drivers for that. If you plug in a USB mouse in a windows PC it will download and install a generic mouse(HID human input device) driver that can deal with what the USB is sending and translate it to mouse movements. These drivers are from certified windows servers and tested for malware, so its kot likeley to get malware that way, but not impossible ether.
So USB does a lot of magic in the background, but gettig malware from that is still super hard and more a state founded hacker level and not something a random kid in a basement is going to develop. But i guess you ask this because some US secret service released a warning?
if you cannot see where the port is connected to there is a myriad of possibilites of what can be done.
– maybe the port is actually connected to a malicious computer system that could implant its own code thru the data link or copy data from your device.
– maybe the port is setup in a way to fry the device its plugged to or at least kill the devices’s USB port.
– maybe the cable itself was modified to do its work and potentally do any of the above.
– maybe either of the above situation have the port or the cable falsely identify themselves to your phone as an input device ot inject malicious commands.
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