KASPERSKY Lab ZAO launched on June 24 a crowdfunding campaign aimed at collecting money to bring a portable charger to the mass market.
Kaspersky Lab Researcher Alexey Komarov wrote in a June 24 blog entry that the device called Pure.Charger is a compact, thumb drive-size USB device.
Komarov said the gadget targets users who are always on the road or spend a lot of time away from sockets at home or in the office and use public ports to charge their smartphones or devices.
In a public USB port in an airport or café, a user sees only the port, and it might be a nice, safe ordinary USB power adapter plugged into a 220-volt outlet, Komarov said. “But there might well be a full-fledged computer on the other end. If it’s a computer port, your device will feed it some data.”
According to Komarov, “someone on the other end might get additional privileges on [a user’s] device, steal data,” infect the smartphone “or modify its firmware.”
“Unfortunately, [a user is] not always in a position to refuse when there’s a need,” Komarov said, adding that this is the reason the company created the portable charger.
“The gadget has a USB input on one end and a USB output on the other,” he said, adding that the device has a touch screen on top that allows a user to interact with the device—to activate or deactivate USB data lines.
“By default, only the power lines are active, and no data is transferred,” Komarov said. “If a USB port requests a connection to transfer data, the device alerts the user, who can opt in to or out of the data exchange with a single tap.”
The basic version of the Pure.Charger starter development kit is $30 (about P1,409.30).
Komarov said the company also offers versions of the gadget with built-in 16-gigabyte (GB) or 32GB flash-storage capacity, priced at $40 (P1,879.06) and $50 (P2,348.83), respectively. The basic version doesn’t have a flash storage capacity.
Komarov said Kaspersky will upgrade and improve the firm’s gadget following a successful Kickstarter campaign. He added Kaspersky plans to make an even more compact version and to launch an even more affordable one.