A team of security experts at the University of Florida working with security audit company CertiK has found that a certain class of cyberattacks could cause a smartphone to catch fire via its wireless charger. The team has posted a paper describing their research and results on the arXiv preprint server.
  • Gravitywell@sh.itjust.works
    261·
    9 months ago

    According to the researchers, “A charger can be manipulated to control voice assistants via inaudible voice commands, damage devices being charged through overcharging or overheating, and bypass Qi-standard specified foreign-object-detection mechanism to damage valuable items exposed to intense magnetic fields.”

    So if someone swaps your Qi charger for a malicious one they can ruin your phone (or some other device it’s supposed to detect as not a phone ?) and maybe execute arbitrary voice commands… 🥱

    • tias
      21·
      9 months ago

      I don’t really get how they consider this a meaningful attack vector at all. Of course I can set the phone on fire if I can replace the charger - that’s pretty much always going to be true and there’s no reasonable way to fix it. The only possible use I see is to do it when someone is not intentionally charging their phone, e.g. holding a malicious charger close enough when they have the phone in their pocket.