Russia’s Kaspersky Lab says unsafe to charge phone from computer

MOSCOW, May 26 (PRIME) -- Russia’s Kaspersky Lab has said it is unsafe to charge smartphones via USB ports of computers as it allows perpetrators to enter the system, steal data and infect it with malware, the antivirus maker said Thursday in a statement.

Kaspersky Lab’s experts tested a number of smartphones run on Android and iOS and found out that devices automatically exchange certain data while being connected with a USB cable. The precise list of data depends on a manufacturer, operating system iteration and the like.

“The danger is that the data can be used by cybercriminals, as the identification of the device makes possible to determine its vulnerability and gain control over it,” the statement read.

An experiment proved that it can be done with a modem command that reboots a smartphone during a firmware upgrade.

“These actions can result in an installation of an application on the device to manage its file system, which cannot be deleted with standard means,” the statement read.

“Smartphone owners can suffer serious damage, because the system can be embedded with anything from advertising software to a program-encoder,” Kaspersky Lab’s expert Alexei Komarov said.

“It can be done even by an unskilled hacker, as the required information can be easily found in the Web. Employees of big companies, who are responsible for making decisions, should be particularly aware of such attacks.”

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