When they said you should be wary of third-party accessories and unbranded cables for charging your smartphone, they were serious. And the latest example of what a cable that isn’t original can do, should be enough to scare you. There is apparently a Lightning Cable that looks just as harmless as an iPhone cable should. But it has a nasty trick up its sleeve, which allows a hacker to take control of your computer, the moment you plug this in to the USB port. This cable has been dubbed the OMGCable.
A security researcher with the Twitter handle @_MG_ took a typical USB to Lightning cable and added a Wi-Fi implant to it. The moment this gets plugged into the USB port on a PC, a hacker sitting nearby with access to the Wi-Fi module hidden inside the cable can run a malicious code and take charge of a PC or remotely access data without the user even noticing.
“This specific Lightning cable allows for cross-platform attack payloads, and the implant I have created is easily adapted to other USB cable types. Apple just happens to be the most difficult to implant, so it was a good proof of capabilities,” said MG, as reported by the TechCrunch website.
The thing with phone charging cables is that no one really gives them a second look. You see one, you plug it in and you let it be. At the same time, a lot of users are wary about using USB drives, also known as pen drives or thumb drives, because they are popular as carriers of malware and viruses that can pretty much ruin your PC.
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