While it has not been proven that smoking or “vaping” e-cigarettes can cause health problems, it seems that an indirect side effect of the habit can act as a lever for distributing malware.
All of these products must be charged to produce the vapor that replaces smoke. In many cases, this can be done by connecting the device to a computer via USB.
In a post on Reddit, a user describes how a security breach at a major company was carried out by malware that entered a computer from the USB charging port of an e-cigarette made in China.
It seems that the malware was hardcoded into the device's charger, so experts couldn't identify it. No matter how many times they cleaned the computer, the malware was still there.
With up-to-date anti-malware and all the usual protection methods in place, security experts were trying to figure out how their systems were compromised. So they started looking for changes that had occurred in their personal lives that could help them solve the mystery.
When they learned that one of the team had recently quit smoking and was using an e-cigarette, the source of the attack became apparent. They realized that their systems were still infected even though they were cleaning their computers. The e-cigarette was connecting to a remote server and downloading the malware.
One way to protect against such risks is to disable the USB data pins, which will only allow charging and not data exchange.
To do this you will need a USB Condom, a device that plugs into the USB port and prevents data exchange.
