This may have happened to you: you are at the airport, at the hotel, in a shopping center and your mobile phone is at 3% battery. You plug it into a public charger, one of those often free terminals made available and which will allow you to finish the day and not find yourself with a black screen and the device off.
Except that it is risky to plug into USB in a public place. The American federal police, the FBI, has just raised the alert, after cases of malware or surveillance software introduced into devices. The FBI recommends having your charger and USB cord with you, and plugging your phone into an electrical outlet rather than USB.
The danger of “juice jacking”
This is the latest example of US government concern over what is known in the United States as “juice jacking”. The name given to this cybercrime where hackers use public USB ports to steal data, like credit card numbers or install malware. The term was coined in 2011 when researchers created a charging station that demonstrated the potential risks associated with this type of station. It’s even more true today that our laptops are increasingly our wallets, our GPS or even our photo albums.
Gaining access to someone’s phone can be as invasive as going home. This is why researchers are looking into the subject and why the FBI is sounding the alarm. Research shows that in ten seconds a malicious charging station can identify the web pages you have loaded on your phone’s browser and that one minute of charging time is enough to compromise a phone. There are examples of bank accounts emptied in this way everywhere: in California, India or Nigeria.
The director of the cybersecurity center at San Bernardino University draws a parallel with our credit cards that should not be swiped anywhere and affirms that we must do the same with our laptops. The parallel is also technological because if magnetic strips make bank cards vulnerable, the same goes for the USB socket on chargers, which is an old technology. The advice of experts is to adopt newer technology, such as USB-C or wireless charging, which is even safer.