Food for thought...
A security expert reckons you should never, ever borrow a friend's charging cable.
They reckon we should be protecting our charging cables like we protect our passwords.
Charles Henderson is Global Managing Partner and Head of X-Force Red at IBM Security. He runs a team of hackers that clients hire to deliberately break into their computer systems in order to expose vulnerabilities
He says that hackers have figured out a way to implant charging cables with malware which can remotely hijack devices and it’s better to be safe than sorry. He told Forbes that:
"The technology is really small and really cheap. It can get so small that it looks like an ordinary cable but has the capability and the intelligence to plant malware on its victim."
"These things are only going to get cheaper to produce and it’s not something your average consumer is going to be tracking to know when it becomes viable on a mass scale."
Henderson also warned that we should always be careful about what we plug our devices and said we should treat it the same way we’re wary about opening email attachments or sharing passwords.
In simpler terms he said:
"There are certain things in life that you just don’t borrow"
"If you were on a trip and realised you forgot to pack underwear, you wouldn’t ask all your co-travellers if you could borrow their underwear. You’d go to a store and buy new underwear."
Fair enough!
