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What is juice jacking?

Juice jacking is a type of cyber attack which involves hacking a smartphone or tablet through a public USB charging point. Imagine, it’s the middle of a fine day, the sun is shining and you’re looking forward to a spot of lunch. All of a sudden, shock horror your smartphone shows 3% battery. 

Disaster, totally ruins your day right?! How are you going to find your way around, reply to emails, meet up with friends in the evening?

Fear not, technology has a solution for everything. Just find a charging point to connect your cell phone via USB. ambiance gare These are more and more common in public places like stations, malls, restaurants and public transport.

Well, it might not actually be the best idea to connect to the first USB port you come across. In November 2019, the LA district attorney actually warned travelers against using public charging points, saying they “may contain dangerous malware”.

Hackers are known for being resourceful people; they use a few different techniques to hack cell phones. Some install malware directly in the charging point. Others have developed clone charging points, which infect devices wih viruses, or steal personal data like bank details, emails and photos.

Juice jacking is not totally new. As far back as 2011, the Defcon hacker convention was trying to raise public awareness of this kind of cyber attack. Event organisers set up informational juice jacking kiosks, which displayed warnings any time a visitor plugged their device into the charging point. The first such kiosk changed its display from “Free charging station” to “You should not trust public charging stations with your devices”. In 2012 the NSA issued a warning to its employees about juice jacking. But the general public is relatively unaware of the risks of USB charging points.

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