Think twice before using a phone charging kiosk

Think twice before using a phone charging kiosk (geek.com)

16 points by white_raven 13 years ago | 12 comments

milkshakes 13 years ago |

    [x] Link-bait title
    [x] Unsubstantiated fear mongering
    [x] Absence of any specific technical details
    [x] Secondhand, factually inaccurate reporting
    [x] Primary source over 1 year old, and very much out of date

Who actually upvoted this and why?

byoung2 13 years ago |

If you find yourself in need of a charging station, the team behind this experiment found that most phones don’t give up information when the phone is powered off.

Most phones? Can someone provide examples of phones that offer data connectivity when the phone is powered off?

jmount 13 years ago | |

Don't iPhones start up on application of power?

maxjus 13 years ago | | |

Only if they are totally dead. If you just power your phone off normally, it will stay turned off until you hold the power button.

swatkat 13 years ago |

Original article at krebsonsecurity.com is over an year old: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2897356

Re-submitted last week: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4951354

Guess geek.com picked up this re-submission and churned an article out of it?? ;)

rawrly 13 years ago |

Agreed this is an article churn for advertisement.

Recently this attack was back in the news due to NSA referencing it in a mobile device security paper.

BTW if anyone has questions about it, feel free to ask me. I'm the guy (along with friends) who was building these kiosks and deploying them at "hacker" conferences and then gave a presentation on the matter.

milkshakes 13 years ago | |

i have some questions. how do i contact you?

rawrly 13 years ago | | |

Email sent to you. Narf!

ronnier 13 years ago |

Maybe phones should provide a "charge only" setting that can be toggled on when using non-trusted devices to charge your phone?

rawrly 13 years ago | |

Many android phones do this, however not all. This is up to the specific ROM you are running.

iOS devices have put in a phenomenal effort to secure against these attacks, including requiring encryption keys before allowing unknown computers to access the device or data.

samsolomon 13 years ago | |

My android does this when I plug it into my car to charge.

[x] Link-bait title [x] Unsubstantiated fear mongering [x] Absence of any specific technical details [x] Secondhand, factually inaccurate reporting [x] Primary source over 1 year old, and very much out of date