Free USB outlets in malls and airports could be used to infect your electronic devices, the FBI warned on Twitter.
“Avoid using free charging stations at airports, hotels and shopping malls. Of the [cybercriminels] found a way to use the public USB port to introduce malware to devices,” the Denver branch of the FBI tweeted, according to CNN last week.
The American agency thus advised citizens to bring “their own charger and USB cable” and “to use electrical outlets instead” to avoid being victims of malicious software.
Hackers can also leave corrupt chargers with a wire lying around in hopes that someone will use it.
Even if these public sockets can be attractive when the battery of your device is red, computer security experts have been raising the red flag for several years now about their use, continued the American media.
“Just by plugging your cell phone into a power strip or charger [compromis]your device is now infected, and it compromises all your data,” Drew Paik, formerly of security firm Authentic8, told CNN in 2017.
And once the device is infected, there is no limit to what the hacker can use, he added.