Electronic Cigarette Infects Computer With Malware

[mrhodes168]

I know this is a few days old now but I haven't seen anyone post about it on here.

So apparently now some guy has plugged in his electronic cigarette at work which infected his computer.

News Post: Health warning: Now e-cigarettes can give you malware | Technology | The Guardian

Original: https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/2mkmlm/the_boss_has_malware_again

What do you guys think? I know this is technically possible but something just doesn’t feel right about the story.

 

[steffijade]

Smells like utter bullcrap to me.

 

[mrhodes168]

Thats what I thought. Someone correct me if I am wrong but shouldn't chargers not have data pins connected to them?

 

[scrumpox]

It's only a matter of time before ...

1. Plugging in my e-cig to recharge in the car:-

a. caused me to crash
b. disabled the ABS
c. reconfigured the satnav and drove me to the local whorehouse where I found my wife moonlighting with the vicar

2. I've given up smoking but my laptop's developed a 40 a day habit.

3. I've no idea where those child porn images came from officer ... probably my Chinese e-cig ...

 

[ZT]

and yet .. we never see this worry about all the cheap USB data keys on eBay .. from which its a far more likely (though still fucking unlikely) way of it happening ...


I guess he should have used a Mac ...

 

[Fubar1977]

I plugged my Kayfun into my Mac and it gave me Leprosy.

(True story).


It`s another quality, well researched piece of journalism.

The good news is, you can tell they`re getting desperate for negative angles when they resort to obvious bollocks like this.

 

[Chronic Screwdriver]

The cable which came with my Iistick is a USB Micro B, and this can be used for data transfer as well as charging the battery (works fine with my Kindle too).

This sort of cable is pretty ubiquitous and often supplied as the standard connection for both power and data supply for many phones and tablets. It's no surprise that it's small form factor is also used for vaping devices.

It's possible that an ecig could transfer data to your PC, but it would need a small amount of solid state memory installed, formatted in FAT32 and dedicated to that purpose alone...

Unless you work for MI6, and have been recently handed a new (and possibly glowing) ecig by a grinning Chinese or North Korean diplomat, I wouldn't worry.

 

[BaldyPete]

Same thing happened to me. Plugged my iStick into my rig and that's where the problem started...

Imagine having to explain to your wife how SSL pass throughs and nicotine-based algorithms got Pornhub into my browser history.

Thanks China.