Who Is Charging My Phone? Identifying Wireless Chargers via Fingerprinting

TL;DR

This paper introduces WirelessID, a system that creates unique fingerprints for wireless chargers based on circuit distortion effects, enabling detection of malicious chargers and enhancing IoT device security.

Contribution

It proposes a novel fingerprinting method for wireless chargers using non-linear circuit distortions and designs WirelessID to identify and prevent malicious charging attacks.

Findings

WirelessID successfully identifies chargers with high accuracy.

The fingerprinting method detects malicious chargers effectively.

The system operates in real-time during standby mode.

Abstract

With the increasing popularity of the Internet of Things(IoT) devices, the demand for fast and convenient battery charging services grows rapidly. Wireless charging is a promising technology for such a purpose and its usage has become ubiquitous. However, the close distance between the charger and the device being charged not only makes proximity-based and near field communication attacks possible, but also introduces a new type of vulnerabilities. In this paper, we propose to create fingerprints for wireless chargers based on the intrinsic non-linear distortion effects of the underlying charging circuit. Using such fingerprints, we design the WirelessID system to detect potential short-range malicious wireless charging attacks. WirelessID collects signals in the standby state of the charging process and sends them to a trusted server, which can extract the fingerprint and then identify the charger.