Five USB Cables and Dongles That Can Fry Your Hardware, Steal Your Data, or Worse
Five USB Cables and Dongles That Can Fry Your Hardware, Steal Your Data, or Worse
Don’t plug random cables or dongles into your devices! ⚠️ Cables and dongles are everywhere, and we use them for all things tech. While most are simple, straightforward, and innocuous, some are weird, perplexing, and sometimes terrifying. There are cables and dongles out there that can cause physical damage to hardware or can even be used to hack into devices and steal information.
Among the most terrifying is the O.MG cable, which looks innocent enough but is equipped with a microprocessor and Wi-Fi chip. Suddenly, you have a platform that’s capable of injecting keystrokes, running scripts, and keylogging. Some even have the ability to wipe their payloads or self-destruct if they are discovered. These cables are so hard to tell apart from regular cables that, as the article’s author recounted, “I once got one of my O.MG cables mixed up with some normal cables, unwittingly lent it to someone, and later that day, I got a notification that it had captured the login credentials from the system it was plugged into and sent them to me.” This incident “served as a good example of how nothing is safe!” prompting the author to “change how I handled and stored these cables. Now I keep them all separate and make sure to wipe any payloads off them prior to storage.”
Another severe threat comes from USBKill devices, which are designed to attempt to kill the device they are connected to by blasting it with several hundred volts. ⚡ Yes, it’s essentially a flash drive, but rather than storing data, it stores lightning! There are a lot of different kinds of USBKill devices, from simple plug-and-zap ones that discharge the moment they are plugged in, to more sophisticated ones that can sit and wait to be triggered by an app, on a schedule, remotely by radio, or with a discreet magnetic ring. Adapters are available for all sorts of ports and interfaces, from RJ45 to HDMI. While newer hardware is more resistant to this attack than older stuff, plenty of newer hardware still dies when subjected to an attack like this. Additionally, USB-A to USB-A cables, which were never designed to have the same connector on both ends, can also cause significant physical damage. Connecting two hosts together can have unexpected side effects, which range from things not working temporarily to things emitting sparks and smoke and never working again.
Data blockers are a must when traveling and provide a critical defense mechanism. These dongles allow power flow but not data, taking away much of the risk associated with connecting to things that you don’t control and that may have been tampered with. However, just bear in mind that there are fake data blockers that can carry malicious payloads. Finally, stop using “widowmaker” male-to-male extension cords. This cord is truly terrifying because it can literally kill people. People use them because they look like a handy way to backfeed power into a property from a generator when the grid goes down, but while this solution works, it’s also potentially lethal. Earlier this year, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission secured a commitment from the big-name e-commerce platforms such as Walmart, eBay, and AliExpress to get these cables delisted.