> ”It comes with one USB-C to USB-C charging cable - not sure if it is a data cable, also.”
All USB-C cables must support USB 2.0 480 Mbps data transfer, at minimum. There’s no such thing as a USB-C cable that doesn’t support data.
All USB-C cables must support USB 2.0 480 Mbps data transfer, at minimum. There’s no such thing as a USB-C cable that doesn’t support data.
I do have an Apple Thunderbolt cable which supports charging (of course), but it was a separate purchase. The Thunderbolt cable looks similar but is a bit thicker, and has the Thunderbolt logo printed on the connectors at each end.
USB A-C cables are entirely separate, there is no CC line, only a fixed always-on Vcc pin at 5V.
Just got a fourth (shorter, different from MacBooks) one with my new iPad, it has data too, which I just used yesterday to restore the encrypted local backup from my previous iPad and perform a new local backup. I bet the cable shipped with these new iPhones is the same as with the USB-C iPad ones.
To be clear, “juice jacking” is not a thing anymore, but people are still foolishly worried about it so there’s a market.
https://www.amazon.com/PortaPow-NA-USB-C-Data-Blocker/dp/B08...
Generally speaking any documented cases of juice jacking happening are just red teams doing PoCs.
It's too esoteric & expensive to be viable at any scale, but it's definitely functional.
When I say unsubstantiated rumor, this is what I’m talking about.
I'm aware. As I said above:
> any documented cases of juice jacking happening are [...] PoCs
You mentioned "code execution bugs" - what is that exactly to you? I presume you don't count HID emulation, so I'd be interested in what exactly does count.
They didn’t get anything unexpected to happen on the device. You really should read the paper, it’s a masterclass in making nothing sound like something.
It’s a favorite boogeyman of the “nation state actors are under your bed” crowd. Which is stupid because they all recommend avoiding public charging and would they be doing that if they were siting on high-quality exploits?
There’s a reason NSO doesn’t target USB, and it’s not because they enjoy creating VMs in the image decoder.
The point is it isn't viable at any scale - nation states advise avoiding public charging because employees of companies they subcontract have been individually targetted. They're not going to be doing any indiscriminate mass exploitation of the general public with it though.
You’re thinking of BadUSB or OMGCable.
1) which is a totally different attack 2) not especially applicable to smartphones 3) very much a thing that happens in real life (I have responded to incidents where one was used)
Lastly, there are plenty of CVEs issued for “feature abuse”, that’s a meaningless distinction.
I believe at least the CC connection needs to be intact for a conformant power adapter or device to even output any voltage for charging for a C-to-C cable.
It might be possible to omit the D+ and D- wires, but that disqualifies many legacy charging protocols as well.
* Data (this one is fairly obvious) * Power (since the CC wire in the cable is missing, and a compliant USB-C power source will refuse to output power unless the CC wire is terminated on the other end which signals what type of device it is)
You'd need at _least_ the CC wire as well.
if you can't walk into the store and pick up a usb-c cable (because we've agreed that cable sold at the checkout counter isn't a real usb-c cable) then why does this standard matter?
Same thing with the sideloading, it's not enough that android lets you do it, apple's business model centered around the iphone as a secure endpoint has to be completely outlawed.
kinda seems the android idea just isn't resilient enough to stand on its own in the market without government intervention to literally outlaw competition with it. given how obtuse and anti-consumer the USB-IF body tends to be, this probably won't end well in the long run.
and this isn't even going into the e-waste problems resulting from the android software lifecycle or the lack of OEM support lifecycle for parts availability, etc - all of which are simply swept under the rug in the headlong rush to coronate a market winner by government fiat.
it's easy to see that with the lack of concern over e-waste, and the lack of concern over sideloading in other situations (like consoles) that this was never really about e-waste at all, it was just legislating a solution to the android vs iphone wars. And that's fundamentally disappointing - fanboy wars should not be the basis for governmental policy and regulation.
Standards and interop are good. If the "free market" refuses to align on that value I'm happy for another mechanism to force it to happen. Judging from this thread, I'm not alone in that.
Not everybody is libertarian here, many are pragmatic, and are not dogmatic when a regulation is good.
For example, we also don't lament how there are standards in power plugs, and we don't have to juggle with 20 competing power outlets from different companies in our own country for the benefit of the "free market", nor are naive enough to believe that the better one would just have "won". That's for "ideal over utility" libertarian types.
Or, like, you know...it's just a charging cable.
I remember Apple intentionally selling non-USB conforming cables for the keyboard on the early iMacs. There was a little notch in the USB cable which meant that it couldn't plug into a standard USB port. The urban legend at the time was that it also meant that they didn't have to include the USB logo on the cable, better matching Steve's aesthetic preferences.