Hardware hacker -Samy Kamkar created a small device which costs $5 which comes loaded with devious code to completely pwn your password-protected computer and install remotely accessible back doors. Even your well protected PC with strong password can be hacked in 30 seconds by the hacker armed with this device. All an attacker need is to plug the nasty device in the target computer and wait.
How Does It Work?
Dubbed PoisonTap (the new exploit tool) runs freely available software on a tiny $5/£4 Raspberry Pi Zero microcomputer, which is attached to a USB adapter.
Once plugged into a Windows or Mac computer via USB port the device starts impersonating a new ethernet connection. Even if the user’s PC is connected to a WiFi network, PoisonTap is programmed in such a way that tricks the computer into prioritizing its network connection to PoisonTap over the user’s WiFi network.
With that man-in-the-middle position, PoisonTap intercepts all unencrypted all Web traffic and steals any HTTP authentication cookies used to log into private accounts as well as sessions for the Alexa top 1 Million sites from the user’s browser and then sends that data to a server controlled by the attacker.
