Are Public USB Chargers Dangerous?

Is "juice jacking" at airports, hotels, and other public places a real threat?

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[notenoughmonkeys]

Juice jacking is real. I once tried to charge my phone at an airport and someone stole my Capri Sun.

[matthewhorwat]

Actually, I bring power banks because most public charging points (or electrical outlets) at airports are broken, inconvenient, or both.

[rasdan]

And that's why i tend to have a lot of powerbanks. And use public USB chargers to charge powerbanks instead of my phone.

[EspadaMK]

More concerned about the port frying my devices, this could be someone simply acting out of malice, or even just a faulty port (are hotels really going to go for the most expensive ports with lots of protection?).

[twocows]

most likely if we saw an attack like this in the wild, it would target specific popular older devices that aren't patched. it's not all *that* difficult to look up old CVEs and write software to take advantage of them; the CVE itself usually explains exactly how the attack would work. the big problem is the range of devices and how different they all are. so it's very possible that this method could be used as a vector for attacking older or unpatched iphones or samsung devices, as these are both fairly popular targets and there are plenty of people running them on old firmware versions. the biggest challenge would probably be not getting caught screwing with public chargers, but this isn't an insurmountable challenge either.

[GameCyborgCh]

you could also use a usb data blocker which physically has no connections to the data pins, or you could make a cable serving the same function by cutting through the data wires

[mariokarter]

"Someone with one very specific model of phone would have to plug into their charging station."
Which is incredibly easy to anticipate if it's an iPhone.

[loyalorange]

One of the things my GF always tells me on the bus is that they're not power-surge-protected, and that a ton of people have experienced battery issues after charging their phone on the bus. That's the main issue that I have, and it's often overlooked. I never hear this point being brought up in any of these kinds of videos.

[Voltaic_Fire]

If something is potentially dangerous then you should always treat it like it is dangerous, taking the precautions to make it as safe as possible.

[kote]

If you're really worried about this... I insist that USB data isolators (or whatever you call them), power banks and all connectors should be in transparent cases. Otherwise, we cannot know for sure what is inside them.

[amn]

Technically possible yes, but someone would have to be either very stupid or desperate to waste such a good exploit on this.

Also considering the many variants of fast charging out there, taking your own cable + brick seems like the best solution

[DanielleWhite]

Years ago, while going through a contentious divorce, my phone was imaged by a data forensics service as part of discovery. It was a then new Pixel model and proved a bit tricky to do because it had a habit of rebooting in response to the attempts

[smokeduv]

Or you can use cables that only have leads for power, at the expense of a slower charging. Anyway, I always carry some beefy powerbanks

[RedPilledwDMT]

But if you use a charge only USB cord (for Android) you're safe

[Charlesb]

Another option you can use if you're paranoid is to get a "USB condom", a special adaptor that plugs onto your phone's syncing cable that blocks data signals but allows power to pass through. You can also buy charging only cables for lightning and USB-C you can use over the regulator sync cable for your phone.

[Mr.Morden]

3:10 this is an example of a very sophisticated attack, i mean look at those Wingdings.

[horizontal]

love that specific value target bit XD

[xXDragonWarriorXx]

03:54 that shot of Linus is priceless hahahahah

[mav]

Love the early 90s throwback: "All Your Data Are Belong To Us"

[KYSMO]

Thanks for the explanation! The easiest way to not get "juice jacked", is to use power banks or to use a "power only-USB-cable", the added benefit, they are most times cheaper than normal ones (to check if your USB cable is "power only" try plugging your phone with the cable into a trusted device that can read/write data (PC for example), if it can't be "connected" due to the cable, you could be more certain that its a "power-only-USB-cable"). (A power-only-USB-cable is a cable that has only the power wiring of the USB-port, when there are no physical data connection wires.)