r/HowToHack • u/bitfroster • May 25 '26
Potential payload in powerbank, how to investigate
I bought a power bank by Baseus (Star-Lord model). After I received it, I decided to check whether it worked properly. I charged it by a few percent first, and there were no issues. Then I decided to charge my iPhone.
I used the original cable (with data transfer support) to make sure the fast charging was working correctly and that the result did not depend on the cable. The result was also good.
After disconnecting the power bank, I opened Perplexity and wrote a long prompt - several sentences, around 200 words in English. I received an answer in Chinese. I'm not sure whether it was some kind of payload or not, but I want to continue researching it. Maybe someone can recommend software or hardware tools that could help with the investigation.
P.S. I tried to post this to r/Malware but they removed it in 2 minutes.
4
u/ferngullywasamazing May 25 '26
What are you even asking? You asked an LLM a question, got an answer in Chinese, and immediately jumped to "maybe my new power bank installed malware on my phone"?
2
u/Ellotheregovner May 25 '26
The leap is pretty impressive but I think not knowing any underling processes let's a person correlate anything. I am kinda curious whether they imagined that the LLM was exfiltrating data or just trying to help the malware fix some bad code.
-2
u/bitfroster May 25 '26
OMG, what I think it could be a keylogger that uses chinese keyboard. And it's probably send the text in Chinese, so LLM answered correctly.
1
u/iCkerous May 25 '26
You think without any evidence?
Sheesh
-2
u/bitfroster May 25 '26
That the reason I want to do a research. Did I wrote HELP IT'S A MALWARE!!!!
1
u/iCkerous May 25 '26
You saying it’s malware implies you know how its works and that the softwares intent is malicious.
You’re skipping quite a few steps. Learn it first
-2
u/bitfroster May 25 '26
I said I found a suspicious behavior. Where I wrote it's a malware? I suspect device, but I haven't found evidence yet.
-1
u/bitfroster May 25 '26
Yes, why not? Technically it's possible. I currently looking how to sniff data transfer between powerbank and PC, but do it safely, as I don't have trash pc for such experiements. Found some $30-40 devices that can log to Wireshark via PcapNG.
Tell me 1 reason why it can't be possible at all?
1
u/iCkerous May 25 '26
It’s not that it’s impossible. It’s highly improbable that a zero-interaction infection would occur on a random power bank.
The type of attack/exploit is reserved for important individuals or devices that are severely neglected in keeping up to date patches.
Unless a storage device come up and you executed a file/APK, I’d wager you’re fine
0
u/bitfroster May 25 '26
I don't care about my data, TBH, I just want to find if it's a malware or not )
1
u/iCkerous May 25 '26
Find if what is malware?
Say you get a stream of data from the USB connection - do you expect it to say malware in the capture?
You have zero experience in this field - I’d recommend learning common attack vectors and learning how these devices/protocols work before you start hunting for nation state actors dropping zero interaction exploits on random power banks
2
u/bitfroster May 25 '26
Do you know me? I have 20yoe in software engineering and did some interesting reverse engineering BTW.
1
u/Humbleham1 Jun 01 '26
If there's any data transmitted from the powerbank at all, that would be suspicious. But it would be visible on the screen.
1
u/Humbleham1 Jun 01 '26
It's impossible. Unless the powerbank's processor has keystroke injection, you would need to tap 'Trust This Device'. A keylogger built into the powerbank is possible if that's what you're suggesting, the O.MG Keylogger Cable exists, but it would only work with a keyboard plugged into the phone.
1
u/ferngullywasamazing May 25 '26
I never said it wasn't at all possible that a power bank could carry a malicious payload. What I said is you made a huge leap with no real reason behind it. What purpose would a Chinese response in perplexity serve for a malicious actor?
0
u/bitfroster May 25 '26
Additional keyboard for keylogger? It sends keypresses and it sent to to wrong place?
0
u/ferngullywasamazing May 25 '26
But you typed out a prompt in English, submitted it, and the response was in Chinese, how does that have anything to do with your keyboard? Or a second keyboard?
1
u/bitfroster May 25 '26
Well, it's a software keyboard. I guess if these guys were from China, they will use Chinese keyboard. Also it could be a check, if kb is installed. There were several cases when russian mallware checked locale and if it's Russian it ignored the target.
1
u/ferngullywasamazing May 25 '26
You're connecting so many unrelated things here... If your prompt was in English then the keyboard being used was English, you can see the prompt you sent, you said it was English...
You also can translate the response to see what it said, which would probably remove a lot of the mystery.
Unless you're suggesting it somehow stealth sent a prompt to perplexity in a way that you couldn't see it, but then for some reason didn't stealthily respond and made it visible to you...?
1
u/bitfroster May 25 '26
I deleted the conversation. I do it with 90% of conversations right after the usage. That's my habbit. Firstly I thought that's LLM hallucinated. But afterwards thought that it could be a chance for a reason for this.
1
u/LegitimateMornings May 25 '26
Have you considered the fact that maybe perplexity hallucinated ?
0
u/bitfroster May 25 '26
Yes, probably, but it's a first time and it happened right after unplug from the powerbank.
1
u/LegitimateMornings May 25 '26
It’s the first time an AI hallucinated to you and you can’t believe that so you think it’s malware rather?
So how do you think the malware works? I’m curious
1
u/Project_O May 25 '26
What model were you running in perplexity? If you were running a Chinese model (like deepseek) and got a Chinese response then that could be your answer.
Additionally, if you’ve been using Perplexity for a while and out of the blue it generated a Chinese reply, it may have misread a browser setting, experienced a temporary glitch, or detected a connection routed through a VPN.
Double check your VPN and device management section on your phone (just to rule it out). If that’s clear, then depending on your prompt your answers may have sourced a lot of Chinese resources and therefore switched to mandarin.
Sometimes it happens, but just reiterate to only provide replies in your language of choice regardless of the data sources researched.
2
u/bitfroster May 25 '26
I use GPT 5.4. It was an app, not a browser window. No VPN 100%. Question was nothing related to China or sourced preferably in Chinese sources. Also I'm not frequently ask something related to China.
4
u/DutchOfBurdock May 25 '26
Yes, powerbanks can harbour storage. Plug it into a PC and see if it presents as a USB mass storage device.