Juice Jacking - A New Danger At The Airport

Welcome back to another episode of Cappuccino Chat. This time we're talking about smartphone attacks at the airport. All right, so this time we're talking about smartphone attacks at the airport. Now, I don't mean pickpockets or people stealing your phone, misplacing the phones, those kinds of things. This is more about um when you plug your phone in. We've all seen those charging stations because we pack our chargers. if we don't have them handy. Uh batteries dying, so we need to plug in. And we've got all these charging stations all over the airport and between seats and all this stuff. And what's happening is this new phenomenon called juice jacking. Now, this has kind of been around in the old days, way back in the day, with false adapters and cables. But now what they're doing is actually getting into these charging stations, these hackers are, and placing devices that will infect your phone, steal data from your phone, those types of things. So when you plug your cable into that charger, it's going to try to do something and launch. Now, there's other attacks like this that are very similar. Happens on computers. Um, it's where a USB key gets plugged in and it runs some preset commands because it thinks it's a keyboard. Uh, when you plug a keyboard in, it just kind of takes those commands. So, you can actually uh it's called a rubber ducky. It's very weird. I don't know why they call it a rubber ducky, but they do. You plug that in and it runs commands on the device you plug it into. So, again, getting off subject a little bit, but be careful when finding a USB key of any kind. and don't just plug that thing in anywhere. So, getting back to this, TSA is warning people about this new attack at airports. So, they're aware of it. They're finding these rogue devices plugged into their charging stations. Um, so not only are they warning us of, hey, be careful using Wi-Fi at the airports in lounges, those types of things, because those can be um hijacked, spoofed, and those types of things. But be careful of these charging stations and not just plugging in and your sensitive information in your phone and stuff on that that they might get on your phone and they might cause some issues. So, um, whenever you're working on a unsecured wireless connection, so again, when you're at the airport, we've talked about this before in the past, use some kind of VPN product so that all your data is encrypted. So, even if they are listening in, if they are on the network, it's gobblygook, right? technical term there for you. Um, they can't see anything. It's gibberish. They can't get your passwords. They can't see where you're browsing to. They They don't know that you're transferring funds from your bank account or purchasing an additional airplane ticket for somebody, whatever case might be. If you're going through that VPN and that's a secure connection, they cannot see the data passing through. When you're not using a VPN, there's chances that they can see everything you're doing online when you're connected to those public Wi-Fi spots. So, you need to be careful. So, not only that, traveling, bring your own charger. I know a lot of times we pack it, but if you're just worried about it, throw that in your backpack, throw that in your carry-on, both the power adapter piece and the cable. So, don't just plug your cable in again to these charging stations. Use your known good Apple, Android, whatever power adapter that you have that came with the device, known good. Use that to plug into power. There still are power uh stations. I was just in the airport recently for a couple travels and they still have them in between the seats. If you look underneath the seats, there's even power uh in some of those seats areas or against the wall or those power stations have outlets as well. Those would be safer for you to use with your known good power adapter and cable. So, be safe when traveling. Be aware of the Wi-Fi and now of this new juice jacking uh phenomenon where they are taking over those charging stations to infect and gather data from your device. If you got any questions in this or need any other questions answered when it comes to your cyber security and IT needs, please give us a call 760 770-5200.