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E-Cigarettes are Bad for the Health — Of Your Computer

posted by martyb on Wednesday November 26 2014, @04:56AM   
from the need-to-put-a-filter-on-that-e-cigarette dept.

q.kontinuum writes:

The Guardian features a story about e-cigarettes carrying some malware, infecting computers used to charge them. Though not entirely surprising when you actually think about it, personally I'd not have expected non-computerized devices which just happen to have micro-usb charger socket to pose a threat to IT security.

From the article:

“The made in China e-cigarette had malware hardcoded into the charger, and when plugged into a computer’s USB port the malware phoned home and infected the system.”

Later the article references some low-level attacks might be used to reprogram USB chips on devices, letting them act as USB keyboards issuing commands on the behalf of the logged in user, etc.

• Re:USB pigtail (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 27 2014, @04:53AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 27 2014, @04:53AM (#120500)

  Have you tried a small inverter to make 120VAC from the 12VDC in your car? You can plug your special wall wart into "wall power" in the car. These are cheap and have other uses too.

  With a larger inverter (600 watt in my case) I used my car as a generator during an extended power outage. My 1992 car with electronic fuel injection ran just above idle...for 8 hours at a stretch, and several days in a row. I just put a stick between seat and throttle pedal, and adjusted the rpm to make sure the alternator was maintaining charging voltage (~14V). Iirc the tach showed about 1200 rpm. This didn't cause any damage--the car ran another 60K miles after the ice-storm power outage, with no engine problems.

  Older cars with carburetors would likely foul spark plugs and suffer other insults from that much protracted running at low rpm.

  Parent