We found out 15 years ago the hardware is probably older
You can now buy one for yourself online. https://shop.hak5.org/products/omg-cable
This is both incredible and horrifying at the same time
Crazy that the USB-A housing is big enough for that. Makes me want to avoid anything that’s not C to C.
C-to-C is even worse because Usb-C requires a chip in the connector, and you never know what that chip is capable of. Usb-A would only have a chip in it if it’s been tampered with.
Yeah I was hoping the smaller form factor would make it difficult to fit in extra malicious hardware.
This was the smallest Bluetooth chip back in 2017. I can’t even imagine what else they can fit into the form factor of a USB-C plug nowadays.
Released last year, TI MSPM0C1104
The MSPM0C1104 is a 24 MHz Arm Cortex-M0+ based device with up to 16 KB of flash and 1 KB of SRAM. It has a 12-bit ADC with three channels, six GPIO pins, and typical communication interfaces like UART, SPI, and I²C. It is an ultra-low-power 32-bit MCU well suited for compact battery-powered designs.
There’s a USB-C option for the active end.
That is amazing. The x-ray of it is kind of scary, honestly. That little chip could be all it would take to get into an air-gapped machine.
There are a ton of different payloads that can be run on these, for everything from simple keylogging, to root access, to network backdoors. I’ve only recently gotten into pentesting but with something like this there’s no real limit to the damage that could be done with only a few seconds of physical access.
Honestly, as a Systems/DevOps engineer it’s always been well know that if you have physical access, you have zero chance of security. Sure it might take more time if precautions were followed, but you will be owned eventually, that’s guaranteed.
This is one of our most frustrating fights I have with our security design reviewers. Effectively functionless mitigations that create extra obstacles for our service reps to deal with during troubleshooting. One example is our equipment is installed in access restricted areas, in a locked rack. We don’t need to disable unused Ethernet ports on our networking equipment that exists in a locked cabinet and it will take away our ability to repatch equipment to a different switch in the system to assist in troubleshooting.
Let me guess, they do allow ai traffic from everyone and their mum for the sake of uhh… innovation?
That is gnarly!
Came to check if anyone had already linked hak5. Glad to see you had shared the link!
Not just the US government, anyone has been able to do this for years
There is also the whole “Bad USB” type of vulns that is pretty scary…
You might be interested in the full Snowden leak
assange, chelsea manning, the msm crucified these 2 as well. funny enough putin allows him to stay because hes useful propaganda.
I wouldn’t include Assange in that list honestly. He was just out for himself in the end as he did muddy the waters in the 2016 election and was easily cajoled by the FSB to leak falsified documents and misinformation.
Chelsea however was a fucking patriot who was pillaried by the state to be made example of. She literally did her patriotic duty and was imprisoned for it.
Yeah, it’s scary how much people don’t remember/don’t know
And don’t care.
Maybe, might also be that since tech literacy has degraded since his leak. Which means that they don’t care because they are overwhelmed with the information that they don’t understand. Hell, I imagine that a lot of the press that where sent the information didn’t fully understand.
The average person likely defaulted to what they always do, and just assumed that the leak meant the feds had to stop and treat it like any other historic reveal (example being stuff like COINTELPRO and believing that it was bad but isn’t done anymore). Hell, a shocking amount of libs honestly thought that Biden was going to bring Medicare for All (even though he said he wasn’t) just because he said “the Democratic Party is the party of healthcare” a few times.
I’m sure it’s a spectrum, and some people may legitimately not be aware, but its been 13 years. As a society, we’ve had ample time to get literate and develop knowledge. Instead we’ve had three presidents from both major parties hold the line that Snowden was a criminal for blowing the whistle on rampant illegal surveillance, and all 3 of them just stepped on the gas.
Voters don’t even see the irony in the pedophiles’ ramping up the surveillance apparatus in the name of protecting the children.
https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/161/
There’s a darknet episode about these cables
USB condoms for charging exist for a reason.
Would limit higher power charging
That’s the tradeoff yes
Pro Tip: Leave a unique mark somewhere on the cable so if someone switches it, you can tell it apart. Always check for the mark before you use the cable, every time.
(Yes I actually do this, I’m paranoid)
If you’re really paranoid you should buy all your stuff in a brick and mortar store. You’d have to be high up on a list for it to even be worth someone’s time, but intercepting a package and swapping the contents is pretty easy to do, typical Tuesday multi-agency gun ring bust for some postal inspectors
My older brother is abusive, and I need precautions to be safe.
That’s my threat model.
I actually would rather run a phone with stock OS with verified boot, rather than LineageOS but with bootloader unlocked. Evil Maid from someone you know wanting fuck around with you is more scary to me than government tbh
(I don’t have a pixel for graphene)
Edit: Also these cables cost like $200 online from HAK5. My brother definitely can pull some shit if he tried. He’s in Computer Science in college.
Is it not possible to lock the bootloader again with LineageOS?
Only with a few rare phones… most phones just gets bricked if you attempt to lock it under a custom os because they don’t support custom keys.
Pixel supports it, but I don’t have a pixel. (If I did I would just use Graphene lol)
New is expensive
and I really distrust the used market… feels very sketchy and it could have hidden damage that doesn’t manifest itself until the return window is already passed (if they even allow a return at all), also I have a paranoia about getting an IMEI that a criminal have used and then cops come knocking thinking its ME doing the illegal activity (cuz you know they do the “oops wrong address” thing often and they’ve shot people to death over it )
You can see a CT scan of one of these
https://www.techspot.com/news/105863-usb-c-cable-can-hide-lot-malicious-hardware.html
damn i though they would use the type A connector because it’s bigger but it can be fit even into usb C
Apple did it with lightning.
America has a governmental deparment of CSS? No wonder your government is causing a Constant State of Suffering
USB condom!
Anyone can do this.
I’ve been using wireless chargers for years. I find it “more secure” in the sense that my phone’s port is full of gunk and if I want to wake up with full batteries I can count on wireless a lot more.
I like wireless and magnetic mainly because fucking up the cable is like the most common thing I might do to a device. not saying I do it all the time but its the most likley break to happen.
I knew about these, but always thought I could spot them.
I wouldn’t!!!
I am not terribly worried about USB/thunderbolt attacks since Android requires authentication before it does anything.
No permission needed for a keyboard to open up a malicious webpage.
Yes a keyboard. Your USB cable wears a trench coat that says “Hey I’m a Keyboard, lemmy in”
Last time I checked a keyboard can’t just open up a web page. That’s not how it works.
Shortcuts…
A human on a keyboard attached to a device while its unlocked can navigate to a webpage just bypressing keys, so malicious USB can just do what a person can do, but automatically.
It probably works much better on a computer after the user walks away, it’s a bit harder on a phone since most people instinctively presses the power button to turn off the screen so it autolocks (since you usually put it away in your pocket, so its muscle memory), but for a computer, there are certain people that just walks away to the bathroom or something and leave their device unlocked… so a person with access to a keyboard connected to that computer can do stuff on it… same as a script on a chip that sends keystrokes to the computer…
Lol, plug a usb mouse or keyboard into your android and it will just work. Anything you can do these things can do.
My phone still requires auth to use plus there is no way for them to get what’s on the screen. I’m also pretty sure that typing a pin requires the screen but I could be mistaken.
Even if there was a way to attack from USB, I still wouldn’t be that worried. USB attacks typically are only used against targeted individuals not some rando. The reason why you see warnings about chargers is because it makes easy clickbait.
