Curious about mysterious plugin and shady character

[TheGardener]

This is isn't a problem because I refused to cooperate, but I'm just curious what this guy was up to.

I'm in Starbucks last night logged to their wifi from my laptop, and enjoying a cup of joe. This guy asks if he can sit at the table. Sure I say. I'm busy, so I'm not paying any attention to him.

Maybe about 15 minutes later he says he wants to plug in. No problem I say. Then he tells me he can't reach the plug (from his chair). I told him he can use the seat opposite to me near the outlet, and I remove my bag from the chair.

Then the guy asks me if he can use my usb outlet for charging. Now I look at what he is doing. He has a phone, and he pulls out this wire with a 4 inch cylinder attached to it. I see a usb micro male plug and I tell him that I don't have plug that would fit that. Then he turns the wire around and he reveals a standard size usb male plug.

I don't want to ask a lot of questions of him. In fact I really didn't want to talk to him at all. I tell him directly I don't want that in my laptop. My response to his why not is that I am concerned about security. He mentions that I am using Starbucks wifi, and there are risks with that. Yes I say, but I understand the risks involved, and I don't know what his device is. Okay, I am sure that I don't really understand many of the risks of using wifi, but it was something to say other than f*** off.

So any idea what this device might be? Could it really be a remote charger? I looked on Amazon and I found a power stick portable battery charger for smartphones that looks a lot like his device. Even if this is the same device, I still wouldn't do it. But I am curious, I am paranoid or not.

One other thing. He tells me that he can do anything on his phone that I can do on my laptop. I'm thinking, except plug in.

 

[DigDog]

i get the feeling you are uneasy, and - while what's done is done - you should have trusted that feeling.

remember to quote me : "no way i'm letting you plug anything in my computer", and add "my friend digdog said".

 

[bononos]

.....
So any idea what this device might be? Could it really be a remote charger? I looked on Amazon and I found a power stick portable battery charger for smartphones that looks a lot like his device. Even if this is the same device, I still wouldn't do it. But I am curious, I am paranoid or not.

One other thing. He tells me that he can do anything on his phone that I can do on my laptop. I'm thinking, except plug in.

It sounds like was a portable battery but you were right about not allowing unknown usb devices to be plugged into your laptop. A design flaw in the usb spec was revealed this year which allows usb devices to reprogram the host device, while being able to test clean on antivirus scanners.

Public wifi is vulnerable to eavesdropping so anyone can hijack your open sessions and steal logins and passwords unless your browsing sessions are encrypted like using a vpn or https. The https everywhere is a lifesaver here.

Theres a security subforum where you might get better help.

 

[John Connor]

Would that USB malware crap use autoplay? Because I have autoplay off. I turn it off with group policy, but I have win 7 ultimate and some lower grade OS's may not have the gpedit.msc snap in which means you have to go to the control panel to turn off autoplay. Which is better than nothing I guess.

Always use a VPN at hot spots. And I have a built in SSH server in the router I can connect to. But my VPN is faster. I use openVPn with PIA but plan on going with VPN.ac as soon as my service is up.

 

[lxskllr]

Would that USB malware crap use autoplay?

From what I remember it's O/S agnostic, which means it'll work on anything. The payload is another story, and I think it has to tailored to the individual, but in any case, it's bad policy to allow devices you don't trust access to your machine.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Speaking of USB vulns, I bought a Digiland 7" Android 701Q tablet at BestBuy, and when I plugged it into my laptop, my laptop acted like something was pressing the spacebar. Who knows what other keyboard keys. I'm still a bit hazy on what that tablet may have done to my laptop. All I know is, my computers automagically install a driver for the device. I have the tablet configured to show up as an MTP device (you can configure that on the tablet).

Still, not sure how it was able to press keyboard keys, unless it was showing up as a composite device. Which I'm not sure I'd be able to identify, if it loads a specific driver.

 

[bononos]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E65nJtsrRFg
USB port blockers when you have to leave your laptop unattended for a while.

 

[seepy83]

In case anyone is looking for an affordable product that effectively mitigates the risks of (1) allowing someone else to charge a device on your usb ports or (2) connecting your device to a public charging kiosk...
http://hakshop.myshopify.com/collections/accessory/products/usb-contraceptive?variant=763920097

 

[TheGardener]

I appreciate all your responses.

Updated my Firefox to include the HTTPS Everywhere plugin. Reading the FAQ, I see that I may encounter some login difficulties at Starbucks, when it asks me to accept their t&c's. Should know in a couple days.

I've started looking at reviews of VPN's. Perhaps a free version would likely do.

I don't regret saying no to the guy who wanted to plug into my usb port. Don't see why he doesn't buy a usb charger that plugs into an outlet. I use one at home to charge my phone overnight.

 

[John Connor]

Have a look at this for VPNs. https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-take-your-anonymity-seriously-2014-edition-140315/

 

[inf1nity]

Would that USB malware crap use autoplay? Because I have autoplay off. I turn it off with group policy, but I have win 7 ultimate and some lower grade OS's may not have the gpedit.msc snap in which means you have to go to the control panel to turn off autoplay. Which is better than nothing I guess.

Turning off autoplay helps only when the malware is an actual .exe file on the removable media. In this case, the malware exists in the USB drive's firmware. This is why it affects all OSs equally, and can't be detected by AVs(AFAIK)

 

[John Connor]

Ahh, yes if it were in the firmware you would be SOL I guess.

 

[bononos]

I appreciate all your responses.

Updated my Firefox to include the HTTPS Everywhere plugin. Reading the FAQ, I see that I may encounter some login difficulties at Starbucks, when it asks me to accept their t&c's. Should know in a couple days.

I've started looking at reviews of VPN's. Perhaps a free version would likely do.

I don't regret saying no to the guy who wanted to plug into my usb port. Don't see why he doesn't buy a usb charger that plugs into an outlet. I use one at home to charge my phone overnight.

I think using a mobile browser which compresses traffic and as a side effect encrypts all its traffic like Opera mini, off-road setting on Opera or enabling Chrome compression would be better than https everywhere which would only work on websites which use https.

 

[seepy83]

I think using a mobile browser which compresses traffic and as a side effect encrypts all its traffic like Opera mini, off-road setting on Opera or enabling Chrome compression would be better than https everywhere which would only work on websites which use https.

Opera Off-Road only encrypts data between your mobile browser and Opera's server (which basically acts as a Proxy). It's actually inherently less-secure than a TLS/SSL session from your browser directly to a web server, because Opera gets the opportunity to play man-in-the-middle.