Can Your Phone be Hacked by a Charger?

    In today's generation of smartphones, the battery cell of a phone is increased and the battery life of the phone is reduced. The maximum stand by time of a battery could be 8-12 hrs. This isn't sufficient for daily usage and we need to juice up our device and juicing up our device in our home or office is not a big task for us but while we are traveling we look for a charging port to juice up our device and most of the time we use public charging ports to juice up our device. This is the place where a hacker launches his/her cyber attack through the USB port's and this type of attack is called Juice Jacking.

    

     

  This is a Digital World where everything surrounding us is digital and this makes our life simple and by the same way even the theft is also happening digital and these thieves are called as hackers and not all the hackers are thieves these thieves are called as Black Hat Hackers and the hacker protecting us from them are called as White Hat Hackers.

     The innovations in smartphone technology are expanding vigorously. How much ever costly your device might be there is always a way to steal the data from your device and this data are used by hackers for blackmailing or this can also be sold in the darknet. Your smartphones are smart and so does the Hackers.

How does Juice Jacking Work?

    You might have seen that while charging your device through a USB port of a Laptop or a PC there is a prompt in your smartphone to select your option for charging or transfer media files or USB debugging and by this you can see that your data can be transferred through a USB Port but while charging through a laptop's port we know that our data is being sent and received or charging Where in this type of attack you don't even know what is taken from you and what is injected in your device and what you know is how much your phone is charged.

The USB port is often used for means of charging and data transfer. A USB Connector always has 5 pins where 2 pins are used for charging and 2 for data transfer and the other one is for ground.

The development of IoT(Internet of Things) is becoming revolutionary in this digital technology and the same thing is also revolutionized in cyber attacks. These IoT devices are smartly used by hackers for stealing your data.

Types of Juice Jacking?

 

1. DATA THEFT: the login credentials of your social media, net banking credentials, debit card, or credit card details can be copied to their device using P2P - ADB  (Phone 2 Phone - Android Debug Bridge) this method can clone your data to another Phone in few minutes by means of USB Debugging.

2. MALWARE INSTALLATION: A malware can be easily installed in your device once your device is plugged into the port. This malware would be functioning until the user detects and remove it and the sad thing is once the malware is injected into the device it is difficult for a user to detect and remove it. The malware would be running in the background even if the device is disconnected from the port. This malware can be accessed remotely to trigger your cameras listen to your phone calls, access location, access storage, etc.,

How to Protect Your Device from Juice Jacking?

Your Data can be protected from the hacker by following these methods.

1.) I will not say to keep your device fully charged because nowadays the usage of the device is more and the standby is low. So always carry a power bank with you and do not use a Public Charging Port.

2.) Switch off your mobiles while charging this method only works on a few mobiles whereas some of the devices grants access to flash storage even if the device is turned Off.

3.) Use 2 pin cables the cables which are used specifically for charging using these cables may prevent data theft as it cannot transfer any data.

4.) Use a USB condom or a Juice Jack defender this device helps in blocking data transfer from the charging port to the device you use.

5.) Do not use any USB cable or Power banks that are left behind it may be left behind by purpose so that you can use and they can steal your data in an easy manner.