Think twice before using a phone charging kiosk

http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/psa-think-twice-before-using-a-smartphone-charging-kiosk-20121224/

by white_raven • 14 years ago

16 12 14 years ago

byoung2• 14 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• 14 years ago

Don't iPhones start up on application of power?

maxjus• 14 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.

milkshakes3• 14 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    [x] Primary source over 1 year old, and very much out of date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?

swatkat• 14 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?? ;)

ronnier• 14 years ago

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

samsolomon• 14 years ago

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

rawrly3• 14 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.

rawrly3• 14 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.

milkshakes3• 14 years ago

i have some questions. how do i contact you?

rawrly3• 14 years ago

Email sent to you. Narf!

Think twice before using a phone charging kiosk

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