Hackers can trick Wi-Fi devices into draining their own batteries

Wi-Fi units acknowledge one another, even when not related to the identical community, and hackers can exploit this to empty their batteries

By Matthew Sparkes

Devices that use Wi-Fi could be tricked into draining their very own batteries, because of a quirk in the way in which that wi-fi networks function. Security specialists say that though the power appears innocuous at first look, it might be exploited to take out safety cameras, or type a part of a coordinated assault with different vulnerabilities.

Ali Abedi at Stanford University in California and his colleagues have found a phenomenon that they name “polite Wi-Fi”, through which units acknowledge and reply to messages from …