A Hacker’s Fake iPhone Charging Cable Can Hijack Your Computer

Most people know that they shouldn’t plug in random flash drives these days, but they may not expect a cable to be a threat. A hacker’s project showed that innocent-looking charging cables could hijack our computers.

Mike Grover, a hacker known as MG, used an Apple USB Lightning cable for his project. He attached it to a small implant that supports Wi-Fi. If you plug this cable into your computer, a nearby hacker will be able to run commands on the computer.

This fake cable called O.MG. You can’t distinguish between it and a normal iPhone charging cable, because it looks and works almost the same. Attackers just need to swap them and wait.

Once it is plugged into a target’s computer, an attacker can hijack it from nearby devices within the Wi-Fi range. Attackers can use their own code or pre-set commands to control the computer like they were sitting in front of the screen. They can send some phishing pages that look realistic, transmit malicious payloads to the computer, or lock the screen so when the user logs in again, their passwords will be collected.

Although MG just used an Apple USB Lightning cable in this project, his implant can attach almost any USB-typed cable. He also mentioned that of Apple is the most difficult to implant, so this means his implant has good capabilities.

At Verizon Media, as a red teamer, MG develops innovative hacking techniques and methods to identify security vulnerabilities and fix them before malicious hackers can find them. He said, even though this is just his personal project, it can help everyone think about how to defend against different threats.

This project took a lot of money and work for MG. He had to spent about 4 hours to make each cable. He worked with several other hackers to improve the O.MG cable’s functionality. He also gave his cables to some Def Con attendees and plans to sell them online soon. As he said, he has a huge list in his head that needs to become a reality. At this point, it just comes down to resources and time.