It’s scary, but real
Everyone uses USB cables to charge their gadgets. If you lose it, not a big deal. You can buy a cheaper cable in the market very easily.
As per a recent report, each household has atleast 1-2 USB cables lying somewhere in their house, that can help charge their devices.
But what if I tell you there are USB cables which can turn your entire digital life upside down?
It can behave so stealthy that you will never know the intrusion nor the source of hack
Behold, the O.M.G Elite cable.
Released at the recent DEF CON Hacker conference, the Elite cable is one of a kind device that combines technical prowess with a stealth design.
By the looks of it, it is just a normal cable that can connect to a power adapter for charging your device.
But the devil is inside the shadows.
It’s a cable that looks identical to the other cables you already have. But inside each cable, I put an implant that’s got a web server, USB communications, and Wi-Fi access.
So it plugs in, powers up, and you can connect to it.
– MG, creator of elite cable
This ordinary-looking cable is, in fact, designed to snoop on the data that passes through it and send commands to whatever phone or computer it’s connected to.
It also has a built-in Wi-Fi access point which makes it even more lethal. Even though this feature existed in the original cable, the newest ones come with expanded network capabilities that make it capable of bidirectional communications over the internet.
It can listen for incoming commands from a control server and send data from whatever device it’s connected to back to the attacker.
What else can it do?
A normal looking cable like this one, can cause serious digital hack to anyone.
The O.MG cable has the capability to perform keystroke injection attacks, tricking a target machine into thinking it’s a keyboard and then typing in text commands.
This already gives it a huge range of possible attack vectors such as, using the command line, to launch software applications, download malware, or steal saved Chrome passwords and send them over the internet.
To make things more worse, it also has a keylogger that can be used to connect a keyboard to a host computer and then record every keystroke that passes through it.
Up to 650,000 key entries can be stored in its onboard storage for retrieval later.
Meaning, your passwords, credit card details or anything that you might have typed using your keyboard can be stored.
Detailed features of the cable is snapshoted below.
Is the cable for sale?
The OMG cable’s price starts from $119.99, which is more premium compared to normal USB cables. Elite version of it costs $179.99.
This definitely is a tool for professional penetration testing, rather than something a low-level scammer could afford to leave lying around in the hope of snaring a target.
There are chances that the overall cost of the cable can come down as the company has started making it in a streamlined production process.
I originally made these in my garage, by hand, and it took me four to eight hours per cable. Now a factory handles the assembly.
– MG, creator of omg elite cable
The dangerous thing about the O.MG cable is that it’s extremely covert.
With a choice of connections from Lightning, USB-A, and USB-C, it can be adapted for almost any target device including Windows, macOS, iPhone, and Android, so it’s suitable for many different environments.
Overall, chances are that you won’t be hacked with an O.MG cable unless there’s something that makes you a valuable target.
This cable is a good reminder that anyone with access to sensitive information should be careful with what they plug into a computer, even with something as innocuous as a cable.
Also given its price, it is not a first hand hacking tool for most people.
But with a bit of time and motivation, someone with a basic technical grounding could find many ways to put it to work.
That’s it.
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