TechHive: USB 'condom' protects your dongle from infected ports

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USB 'condom' protects your dongle from infected ports Sep 13th 2013, 17:54 Plugging into strange ports can get you into trouble. So why not carry around a layer of protection? That's the thinking behind the USB Condom, a product that applies the lessons from your high school health class to your high-tech devices. According to the creators at int3.cc, the USB Condom cuts off the data pins in a standard USB cable, preventing any data from transferring in either direction. All that's left are the power pins, so you can plug into whatever port you please with reckless abandon. This image, posted at int3.cc, illustrates how the USB Condom cuts off data pins, so only power flows through. (Click to enlarge.) The USB Condom is supposed to protect against "juice jacking"—the idea of stealing data or uploading malware when an unsuspecting user plugs into a USB port. Hackers began talking about juice jacking a couple years ago, and while it's largely a theoretical threat, security expert Jonathan Zdziarski recently wrote that he has seen these attacks in the wild before. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Media files: usb_port-100054068-small.jpg

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