Recharging your mobile phone from public columns can mean opening the door for hackers to access your personal data. The Denver branch of the FBI launched an alert on Twitter on April 6 to warn of the potential risks of so-called “juice jacking.” “Avoid using free charging stations at airports, hotels or shopping malls. Bad actors – read the FBI alert – have devised ways to use public USB ports to introduce malware and control software into devices. Bring the your own charger and USB cable and use a power cord. outlet instead.” In fact, the charging port on smartphones is also a data port: by exploiting it, cybercriminals can penetrate the memory by installing a virus without the user knowing, and without even having to ‘physically access the device.
The precautions
It should be noted that both iPhone and Android phones, when connected to a socket, do not allow access to data without the authorization of the owner, and only leave the charging part active. But there is still the possibility, however remote, that there is an unknown attack capable of bypassing the embedded protections. For this reason, it’s best to take the necessary precautions: use your own cable with your charger, rely on a power bank, or travel with cables that only secure charging, without soldered data pins. But it can be just as risky to connect to public Wi-Fi without a VPN: Anyone can set up an access point at an airport or mall, design a free registration page, and use it to read traffic. As the DigitalDay site explains, the session cookie could be intercepted to authenticate within a site without necessarily going through login. In recent months, the theft of the session token has been the most used expedient to access social networks such as YouTube, Facebook or Instagram without permission: the illustrious victim Linus Sebastian, YouTuber of the channel Linus Tech Tips.
FBI ‘juice jacking’ alert: ‘Don’t charge your phone at airports and stations, your data will be stolen’
Source : IL Messaggero
