When you are out and about with your iPhone you don’t always have time to stop and charge it. Sometimes, you don’t even have your charger handy to do it anyway. Luckily, there are public charging stations in airports, bus stations, malls and convention centers. As the business discussions and emails drain the battery and your day isn’t half over yet, you may go in search of any location where you can get the power you need to continue working. Before you do that, there’s a little bit of news that may stop you from plugging your trusty iPhone into any old charger.
Apparently an ingenious group of technicians at the Georgia Institute of Technology have created a charger that doubles as a portable hacking device specifically for the iPhone iOS system. This device, dubbed a Mactan, presumably a combination of the words Mac and Trojan, infects the iPhone with malware through the current being used to charge the iPhone. The Mactan is so successful that all users are vulnerable to the device. It does not require hacking or user interaction to prompt the hack. It bypasses the venerable security of the iOS in less than sixty seconds.
While no one expects that the Mactan will be installed in these public locations, the odds are that they could be used in other areas to offer the unsuspecting iPhone user a chance to get the power they need to keep working. In July, the Mactan will be featured at the annual security gathering known as the Black Hat Conference. At this conference there are a number of similar devices used to hack into smart phones.
With personal information, banking data for personal accounts and all the other private information that so many rely on their smartphones to conduct business on a daily basis, the loss of security represents more than just an inconvenience. These types of devices can be used in schemes to steal identities as well as cash. So before you plug in your iPhone, give it a second thought before using a public unknown source of power to keep your business day going strong. It would be better to remain out of contact for an hour or two while you recharge your device on a trusted charger.
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