20 Jun E-cigarette Malware can be used to hijack PCs
While e-cigarettes are 95 percent safer than smoking a traditional cigarette, they may not be so safe for your computers. E-cigarette malware is now showing up.
Security researcher Ross Bevington, lately demonstrated at a recent convention how an e-cigarette could be easily used to attack a computer by either interfering with its network traffic or fooling the machine into thinking the vape is a keyboard or mouse.
The second e-cig hacking possibility comes from a security engineer and malware researcher by the name of FourOctets, who recently posted a 22-second proof-of-concept video. It showed a modified vape pen hijacking and running code on a Windows laptop it had been plugged into. FourOctets’ method was more complicated. as he told Sky that he had modified the vape pen by adding a hardware chip which allowed the device to communicate with the laptop.
How E-Cigarette Malware Works
Once safely connected to the PC e-cigarette malware can deliver just a few lines of code that would then kickstart the download process of a powerful virus.
Earlier this year another hacker and researcher known as FourOctets uploaded a video to Twitter which showed how an e-cigarette could be used to deliver just enough code to force a message to appear on the screen.
While this is in and of itself harmless, it shows that while you couldn’t store an entire virus on the e-cig you could easily store a small set of instructions which then tells the computer to download it.
For individual users this form of hacking presents a relatively low risk. For an e-cigarette to become a delivery device it would have to be physically altered. Where they can present a risk is with businesses. However speaking to Sky News Bevington believes due diligence should be more than enough to keep them safe.
It is done because most of the e-cigs come with a rechargeable lithium-ion battery, which can be plugged into a cable or directly connects to the USB port of a computer.
To avoid such risks, it is advised to disable data pins on the USB and keep only cable charge to prevent any information exchange between the devices it connects. Alternatively, use a USB Condom, a gadget that connects to USB and makes data pins ineffective.
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