Here’s another risk to add to the many issues that business travelers and their organizations must address: juice jacking — a type of cyberattack that involves malicious wall chargers or compromised mobile accessories.
Public USB power charging stations are now ubiquitous in the spaces business travelers frequent, including airports, hotels and other points of transit or accommodation. That’s why every business traveler and organization needs to understand that these resources could be hijacked by cybercriminals as a conduit for delivering malware or stealing sensitive data.
What Is Juice Jacking?
It seems like everybody is suddenly talking about juice jacking, which is likely due in large part to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office declaring that it’s a real threat in a recent security alert. But what is juice jacking, exactly?
USB charging ports in airports, hotels and elsewhere can be replaced with modified versions capable of delivering malware to devices once they’re plugged in. An even easier method is modifying an AC adaptor or even a charging cable to do the same thing. This works, of course, because the USB standard is designed to convey both electricity and data. At public charging stations, people are thinking of using USB only for charging, but cybercriminals intend to use it to steal data or for malware delivery.
The History of Juice Jacking
The data security world first heard about the threat of juice jacking at DefCon in 2011. Researchers from Aires Security set up a juice jacking legitimate threat nothing worry about
