E-cigs Are Suspected Of Spreading Malware
Today, electronic cigarettes are sold like hot cakes: they seem to be an effective tool for people willing to give up smoking. For those who have never seen an e-cigarette, it represents a personal vaporizer, a battery-powered inhalation device that serves as a useful substitute for tobacco smokers.
We don't know the genuine impact of e-cigs on our health, however, they are claimed to pose a real threat to our PC. How can these two be connected? The scheme is quite simple: to recharge the device, you plug it into a USB port without the undersense that malware components can be planted in e-cigarettes.
On Reddit, a user posted a report saying that his computer was infected with a virus: “The made in China e-cigarette had malware hardcoded into the charger, and when plugged into a computer’s USB port the malware phoned home and infected the system”.
As viable solutions, security consultants recommend purchasing e-cigs only by trusted manufacturers and employing up-to-date antiviruses.
Disable autorun of removable drives if you don't need it. That will prevent USB & other drives from selfinitiating,thus reducing the probability of spreading infection
(Separately): E-cigs don't help quitting that much because it simply exchanges one nicotine addiction with another, but will reduce tar deposits inside lungs & bother less any potential passive smokers that may happen to be around because it has no smell.
Important! A USB charger uses only the power supplying pins of a USB port (+&- 5vdc),as for the data circulation wires,they're not connected inside a cord made for charging batteries via USB, so I do not see how an infection could use data wires if they aren't connected in the 1st place? Anyway such a trick can be checked.