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A comment on Wireless Charging Power Side-Channel Attacks.

Re:Wireless Charging Power Side-Channel Attacks by mjg59 on Monday September 13, 2021 @03:26AM (#28508743)
This doesn't seem like a surprising result, but it's nice to see it demonstrated. It's also a clear demonstration that avoiding untrusted chargers isn't just a matter of avoiding plugging your phone into random USB sockets - if you have a sufficient level of concern, it's also a matter of not putting your phone down on a flat surface that someone could have put a charger in and then letting your phone do some cryptography.
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Re:Wireless Charging Power Side-Channel Attacks by jayflux on Monday September 13, 2021 @05:30AM (#28509346)
Where will it end though? At this level of paranoia how would people leave the house?

At some point you need to have a level of trust which is viable for daily life.

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Re:Wireless Charging Power Side-Channel Attacks by DrAwdeOccarim on Monday September 13, 2021 @06:00AM (#28509512)
I wouldn't mind a toggle switch in settings that requests me to push "Yes" if I place my phone on a wireless charger. If you leave this function off, it just charges (for people who don't mind the risk).
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Re:Wireless Charging Power Side-Channel Attacks by bayindirh on Monday September 13, 2021 @07:18AM (#28510052)
When you connect your iPhone to a new and unrecognized device, it actually asks to whether trust or not trust that device.

If your device is locked, you need to authenticate to trust to said device.

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Re:Wireless Charging Power Side-Channel Attacks by radec on Monday September 13, 2021 @09:14AM (#28511066)
Really, even wireless chargers? That's great.
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Re:Wireless Charging Power Side-Channel Attacks by bayindirh on Monday September 13, 2021 @09:17AM (#28511099)
A wireless charger has no data transfer capability yet, so "no" for now. However if a USB port shows any sign of data transfer capability, it's blocked until you trust it.

Power starvation / observation attacks are passive attacks in a sense. They get their results by observing only.

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Re:Wireless Charging Power Side-Channel Attacks by atatatat on Monday September 13, 2021 @10:35PM (#28519540)
> A wireless charger has no data transfer capability yet

..but...the article

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Re:Wireless Charging Power Side-Channel Attacks by bayindirh on Tuesday September 14, 2021 @02:02AM (#28520839)
The article is about a side-channel attack, where you don't transfer any data, but just observe something (in this case power draw from a wireless charger) to get some information.

In these types of attacks, you don't transfer any actual information, but guess something from observation.

There are more exotic attacks [0][1] which exploit the heat computers generate to exfiltrate data or time power starvation attacks.

[0]: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3133956.3133994 [1]: https://www.wired.com/2015/03/stealing-data-computers-using-...

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Re:Wireless Charging Power Side-Channel Attacks by tedunangst on Monday September 13, 2021 @10:50AM (#28512214)
Clearly what's needed are single use phones that don't need charging, thus eliminating the side channel.
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Re:Wireless Charging Power Side-Channel Attacks by vlan0 on Monday September 13, 2021 @11:11AM (#28512475)
Even simpler; do not use when it's charging.
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