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posted by martyb on Monday July 20 2020, @06:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the Phones-do-not-come-with-a-fuse? dept.

Another cyber warning has been issued about the risk from compromised chargers—but this time data theft is not the issue...

Hackers Can Now Trick Usb Chargers To Destroy Your Devices—This Is How It Works:

Not all cyber attacks focus on data theft. Sometimes the intent is "to achieve destruction of the physical world through digital means," Chinese tech giant Tencent warns. The company's researchers have just disclosed a serious new vulnerability in many of the mass-market fast chargers now used around the world.

[...] Tencent’s researchers have now proven that a compromised charger can override this negotiation, pushing more power down the cable than the device can safely handle, likely destroying the device and potentially even setting it on fire.

Because the fast charger is essentially a smart device in its own right, it is open to a malicious compromise. An attack is very simple. With malware loaded onto a smartphone, an attacker connects to the charger, overwriting its firmware and essentially arming it as a weapon for whatever plugs in to it next.

The interesting twist here is that the malware might even be on the target device. An attacker pushes that malicious code to your phone. The first time you connect to a vulnerable fast charger, the phone overwrites its firmware. The next time you connect to that same charger to [recharge] your device, your phone will be overloaded.

Tencent has produced a demo video, showing how a charger can be compromised and then used to overload a device.

Tencent have dubbed this issue "BadPower," and warn that "all products with BadPower problems can be attacked by special hardware, and a considerable number of them can also be attacked by ordinary terminals such as mobile phones, tablets, and laptops that support the fast charging protocol."

 
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  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday July 21 2020, @05:34PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 21 2020, @05:34PM (#1024666) Journal

    We are potentially talking about considerable amounts of power.

    A USB-C laptop charger can provide up to 100 W. A USB-C phone charger up to 15 W.

    You CAN actually use the laptop charger on a phone, and phone charger on a laptop.

    The phone simply charges fast. The laptop warns that it is charging slowly.

    My wife and I plan to only buy USB-C laptop chargers in the future because they're almost as cheap as phone chargers.

    A Raspberry PI design assumes more power is delivered by more current rather than higher voltage. By negotiating higher voltage, you don't need thicker USB-C cables to charge a laptop.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
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