No Free Wireless Charge: Covert Channels via Wireless Charging on Mobile Devices

Manufacturers and users have embraced the shift from wired to wireless technologies—a shift that promises convenience, reduced cabling, and modernization. Manufacturers cut costs by cutting down on wiring; meanwhile, users experience increased accessibility and mobility on their wireless devices. Naturally, wireless media does not come with wires, but it does come with strings attached. In a wireless world, when device A talks to device B, communication is no longer physically constrained to the two of them. Instead, the communication channel is shared by many devices, opening up avenues for eavesdropping and interception.

Wireless charging, which has become de facto functionality on many types of smart devices, is not immune to this phenomenon. Qi, the leading standard in this domain, provides a communication protocol that is unencrypted and insecure. In fact, the Qi standard enables several new means of wireless charging attack. In this paper, we propose three novel attacks on wireless charging stations, named LeakyCharge, SneakyCharge and CheatyCharge. Two are supply chain attacks, while the third would allow an adversary to perform random attacks.