Vaping is bad for the health

[Giraut]

of your computer

Check out this interesting article from The Guardian. One more reason not to charge stuff from a computer's USB port.

Too bad about the final bit about e-cig fires...

 

[UncleRJ]

Does not surprize me..............Sigh

 

[Whiskey]

 

[ManaBase]

yep

yea that pretty much sums up my response too

 

[Drone]

This ignorance defies description. There are very, VERY few mods with a USB connection that have serial communication. Only those with the ability to upgrade like the SX350 chip and a few other rare examples. If you plug it into your computer and the device manager asks for a driver it has serial communication. If your computer doesn't ask for a driver, it doesn't have the ability to "talk" to your computer and cannot deliver a malicious payload. 99% of all mods with USB charging ONLY have the ability to take power from your USB connection. That is because they only have 2 of the 4 pins active on the USB connection, and those two pins can only deliver 5v power. Period. The 2 unconnected pins are for serial communication and the reason they are not present is because a USB board with serial connection are more expensive so mod manufacturers are not going to buy them unless they provide specific upgrade software and drivers for communication with the PC.

 

[Giraut]

@Drone: the point of the article is that, although most ecigs that aren't "smart" shouldn't have a data link, some do, for nefarious purposes.

Also, while there is dumb USB malware hardware (that announces itself as a USB mass storage and contains an autorun.inf), other devices aren't so dumb and are able to subvert the drivers of many widely-used USB chips without you knowing anything about it when you plug it in, and without triggering the UAC popup.

As for the two serial lines, they are not used only for data transfers: non-data USB devices that want to charge up are supposed to negotiate the charging current with the USB hosts through these lines. If you cut them, the device won't be able to pull more than 500 mA out of the USB port.

Me, I use a USB condom to charge my cellphone from untrusted USB charge ports when I travel. This thing ensures that there won't be any data exchange between your stuff and the power source, while retaining the ability to negotiate the best charging current.

 

[Drone]

Sorry Giraut, this simply isn't true at all. All newly detected USB devices have to be installed. Yes, Windows has a rather large device driver database, but any USB device plugged in that hasn't been detected and added to the hardware abstraction layer, whether a driver is present for installation or whether Windows has to search online or Microsoft's more complete online driver database, is always added with an announcement of a newly detected device. Even a new mouse plugged in will trigger this behavior. It is obvious when this occurs. This also increases the cost of the USB interface, which manufacturers are necessarily reluctant to do since it dilutes profit margins. This is plain fear mongering and has no basis in fact.