Dead Starbucks charger and devious thoughts.
bigclivedotcom 1:23
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The harsh life of a Starbucks USB charger. This one has clearly had one of its sockets mashed and an attempted repair that would be pointless unless it used swappable modules.
Note that it wasn't really practical to explore this further due to it being in an airport after security, so tools would have been an issue. (And indeed someone with a big beard tampering with fitments.)
This did make me ponder if anything malicious could be incorporated into a charging socket like this. It would require that the phone's charging port was capable of accepting something like a rubber ducky for a phone. (Pretends it's a keyboard so it can run scripts without permission.) On further investigation it appears that some phones are vulnerable to that type of device.
The other very evil thing you could do is use a diode and resistor arrangement to charge a capacitor across the USB output to peak mains voltage or more to blow peoples phones up when they plugged them in to charge. Like a USB killer that works with any USB device.
It does make you wonder if the ideal charging lead for travel is perhaps one with the data pins isolated and a voltage protection device incorporated. Perhaps McDonalds has the right idea with their table mounted inductive charging coils.
If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and random gadgets for disassembly at:-
http://www.bigclive.com/coffee.htm
This also keeps the channel independent of YouTube's advertising algorithms allowing it to be a bit more dangerous and naughty.
Note that it wasn't really practical to explore this further due to it being in an airport after security, so tools would have been an issue. (And indeed someone with a big beard tampering with fitments.)
This did make me ponder if anything malicious could be incorporated into a charging socket like this. It would require that the phone's charging port was capable of accepting something like a rubber ducky for a phone. (Pretends it's a keyboard so it can run scripts without permission.) On further investigation it appears that some phones are vulnerable to that type of device.
The other very evil thing you could do is use a diode and resistor arrangement to charge a capacitor across the USB output to peak mains voltage or more to blow peoples phones up when they plugged them in to charge. Like a USB killer that works with any USB device.
It does make you wonder if the ideal charging lead for travel is perhaps one with the data pins isolated and a voltage protection device incorporated. Perhaps McDonalds has the right idea with their table mounted inductive charging coils.
If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and random gadgets for disassembly at:-
http://www.bigclive.com/coffee.htm
This also keeps the channel independent of YouTube's advertising algorithms allowing it to be a bit more dangerous and naughty.
Category (YouTube): Science & Technology
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