A type of cyberattack that could set your smartphone on fire | Hacker News Reader

A type of cyberattack that could set your smartphone on fire

techxplore.com

11 pointsbindidwodtj11 comments

Specially interesting in the context of the past events a few days ago, when a huge fire in Spain allegedly started as a small electric problem and was supercharged by a poorly chosen facade cladding plus strong wind. All the domotic building had a previous history of malfunctions it seems.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwVXC1V-N44

With more data, it seems that the spark in this case started in the retractable awning system while the tenant was on a travel. I assume that the awning tried to retract on strong wind circumstances and maybe got stuck on a loop? Or maybe the wind damaged physically the system and tore off the cables creating a short-circuit.

The flammable cladding did the rest.

That lead me to ruminate about if "your smart home can kill you" has finally happened.

Wasn't this already a thing waiting to happen with usb-pd? What's there to prevent a pwned phone from requesting too much voltage from a charger?

Inside cables that support USB-PD, there are chips that tell the peripherals what level of power transmission they support, so that attack shouldn't be so easy.

Voltage is gonna be what fries devices, not current. If you reconfigure the phone or whatever to accept 20V (even if it would blow up at 20V) you could fry the phone quite easily. This would be extremely device specific, but would not be hard. It would also require you to be connected to a power supply capable of providing that voltage too… so it would be innocuous if it was never plugged into something capable of that voltage.

Also, the cable doesn’t care about voltage. You can use literally any cable to provide 20V just fine.

Charger won't provide voltage it doesn't support. It won't negotiate it, and if it does then it is broken. If the phone tries to pull too much current, the charger won't provide it, and either shut down or limit the current.

If you took a cell phone that only accepts 9V or 12V and changed it to think it was permitted to accept 20V, you could easily fry a phone. Charger will happily supply it if you trick the phone side.

This would require malware on the phone itself, though. Possibly something quite low level.

> by attaching an intermediary device to the adapter

If you need physical access to the charger, is it still a "cyberattack"?

> If you need physical access to the charger, is it still a "cyberattack"?

Everything is a "cyberattack" those days. And AI. How could they forgot this one ? /s

I guess the author didn't heard about the USBkill.

One more reason to never trust a USB outlet and always place a powerbank in between it and your devices.

cheap power banks can have their own fire risks, and even some more reputable power banks like anker: https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/anker-recalls-535-series-pow...

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