A type of cyberattack that could set your smartphone on fire using its wireless charger

Zerush@lemmy.ml to Technology@lemmy.ml – 105 points –
A type of cyberattack that could set your smartphone on fire using its wireless charger
techxplore.com
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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... 🥱

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.

Well now all we need is internet connected chargers with dodgy security...