Electronic cigarettes as well as other USB-gadgets can be a source of infection of users’ computers with dangerous viruses.
According to the British The Guardian, electronic cigarettes can benefit smokers, but can be a potential threat to their computers according to InoPressa portal.
The article reports that the majority of the electronic cigarette are charged from the USB-connector of a personal computer or laptop. When connected to this jack cheap electronic cigarettes produced by unknown companies, gets the access to users’ electronic device. Thus, the computer can get malware.
As a confirmation of this thesis InoPressa brings the story of one Reddit user, which faced with such a situation.
According to him, the top managers’ computer in some large company has been infected with malicious software, the source of which for a long time could not be set. But in the end it turned out that in the charger of e-cigarette, made in China, was hard-coded with malware. When his e-cigarette was connected to computer USB-port, the virus started infecting its system.
Security consultant of Trend Micro company – Rick Ferguson called this case quite plausible. About such “Malware” have been known for several years, they infect photo frames, MP3-players and so on,” – he said.
According to Ferguson, enterprises should disable USB-ports on computers, or to take measures so that employees use only authorized devices. And ordinary users should install and update anti-virus software and do not to communicate with devices of dubious origin.
Note that in late July, experts in the computer security field from the German company SR Labs announced about the detection of a dangerous vulnerability in a standard USB-firmware. It was reported that experts have managed to implement hidden from any security software, malicious code, that allows you to access files stored on the hard drive, capture passwords, to redirect Internet traffic and spy on users. Also, this software could infect other USB-devices connected to the computer.