The Cyber Crime of Juice Jacking in Developing Economies: Susceptibilities, Consequences and Control Measures

It is convenient and the norm to have both data and power cables (battery charge) integrated as a single Universal Serial Bus (USB) cable for today’s mobile devices. While the data component of the cables serves as the channels for data communication, the power channel charges the mobile devices through an adapter connected to an Alternating Current (A/C) socket or directly to a USB port. This convenient and seemingly harmless design could also serve as a medium through which malicious hacks are carried out on the connected mobile devices as studies and recent experimentations has shown. This hacking variant called Juice Jacking now serve as a potential avenue for mobile device exploitation, especially in developing economies where poor power grid infrastructures has allowed for indiscretions in charging devices from any available. This paper formulates a simple architecture for Juice Jacking cyber-crime, review prove-of-concept experimentation for Juice Jacking from available literatures, identifies significant threats and levels of impact of this cyber-crime on the community. It also highlights strategies that could mitigate juice jacking in developing economies.