They make USB-C cables with displays now
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> The O.MG Cable is a hand made USB cable with an advanced implant hidden inside. It is designed to allow your Red Team to emulate attack scenarios of sophisticated adversaries. Until now, a cable like this would cost $20,000 (ex: COTTONMOUTH-I). These cables will allow you to test new detection opportunities for your defense teams. They are also extremely impactful tools for teaching and training. Thanks to continual firmware updates, the resulting power, flexibility, and ease of use have made the O.MG Cable a favorite.
Which "regulations" might those be?
merely existential threats for small business
this is single party ToS atmost.
Do not whitewash harmfull practice as the law.
You say that as if "The Law" is not already a set of whitewashed harmful practices.
This is true for anything cybersecurity related and more strict for "intrusion" tooling.
Not sure about domestic sales though...
Why hide a malicious chip in a cable with display -- why not in one without a display? Wouldn't that be more, uh, malicious?
It's actually really easy to use (and almost scary, coming from never having used one of these).
They are quite pricey, but way less so than older cables used by security and jailbreak researchers in years past, which would run into the five figures.
My surprise was specifically about the supposed cell modem within a 6€ cable
Now pardon me while I scoot these potted flowers closer to you…
Then again, this person discovered these cables this year and they've been out for awhile. And the OMG cable has been out for a few years now, which does exactly what they are afraid of. Which of course could be done by state actors for much longer.
Their 20,000 mah battery charger works exactly as advertised, has exactly the charge we expect, keeps working few years after purchase just as new.
So, to end suspense - what are actually high end manufacturer(s) in this area? I don't mean gucci-style appearance or some useless branding inflating the price, I mean actual internals.
I now love and trust Anker.
I showed that when the SmartQ q7 tablet computer was plugged into my PC's USB port using the cable my PC threw a warning about excess power drain, but when another cable was used, it did not throw an error. I proved that by recording a cell phone video.
I might have also used a USB power meter but I do not remember.
Here is more on the ancient tablet: https://www.engadget.com/2009-05-27-smart-q7-reviewed-deemed...
Did it destroy peripherals for you too?
More than this everybody (and in particular; "the common non-tech person") needs a powerful and feature rich "USB Power Meter". This and knowledge of a couple of equations (eg. P=IV) goes a long way in understanding how good a charger/battery is, how to prevent overheating problems during charging, whether fastcharging can be used and at what capability or not etc.
And this one for USB 3.0 four years ago: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B019RHJRM8/
Modern ones give a whole lot more information than the one in the article.
With the meter, you can see a current peak up to a nice round value, followed by a voltage drop. The low refresh rate makes it not nearly as clear as with an oscilloscope, but once you know what to look for, it is easy enough to pick up. (And if you really want to, you can get one with a breakout to connect scope probes).
If this is an issue you run into often, I'd also suggest a usb variable load tester to check exactly how much current a port will output.
1) The battery is dead and cannot be charged.
2) The cable is a non-charging one or internally damaged/dead or non-fastcharging or with limited fastcharging capability.
3) The charger is not capable enough to supply the max current that the device can use to charge itself.
To troubleshoot the problem, first check the Voltage/Current specs for your device, make sure that the charger plug/battery can provide the same voltage but same or higher amount of current. Then use a USB power meter to see what is actually being drawn (or not) to figure out where and what the problem might be. One key point to note is that for fastcharging all the links in the chain i.e. charger, cable and device should support it.
Another use case was when the battery in my laptop was completely empty, which made it switch to some emergency charging mode that didn't like the normally fine USB-C power supply. I found that it did accept charge from an external battery, so I charged it using that for a while until it booted.
I have a cheap device that costs about 2€ on AliExpress. It is not a cable but a little box.
https://www.avhzy.com/html/product-detail/avhzy-c3-usb-c-3-1...
>PC suite for advanced online data logging, PD listening, online fast-charge trigger, and firmware upgrade.
This is a great and powerful USB power meter which is highly recommended. Make sure that you read and keep the manual handy since there are so many functions (and heed the warnings listed there). There are other cheaper versions/clones of this on Aliexpress which may also be good.
Another great gadget (no USB-C though) is "PortaPow Premium USB + DC Power Monitor/Multimeter/DC Ammeter" which is a neat little device - https://lygte-info.dk/review/USBmeter%20Portapow%20UK.html Checkout the reviews on Amazon too for further details.
Current USB-C cables that connect to my docking station have a rigid connector end that puts mechanical stress on my laptop's port. I have the habit of moving my laptop around on my desk, and that connector end is a lever that pulls it out of the port.
Worse, it physically wore out one of the ports where it became almost unusable (replacing requires an entire new board).
Let's not put more stuff on these cables so they don't act more like like pliers instead of actual cables.
The only thing which comes to mind is the mandatory "Billboard Class" support for USB-C adapters, which allows them to inform the device they're attached to that negotiation has failed. But that's not really anything physical on the adapter itself, it's essentially a super-simple read-only micro flashdrive.
USB is quite the rabbithole, with a lot of functionality often hidden: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39470381 - my takeaway from this is that "the PHY in the controller is 99% of the SERDES you wish you had, you just have to figure out how to make it cooperate"
The chipsets found attached to ARM devices and SoCs etc may be easier to poke around at, but they are likely to either be expensive or just USB 3.0. :)
Then there are devices like the FNB58 and the Power-Z KM003C that interrogate the controller chip in the cable and tell what charging protocols the cable supports, and also measure practical charging voltage and current (and you can acid test chargers using USB charger dummy loads). These devices don't test the cable's speed though. (On that note, https://old.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/1b5wgc6/how_t... - that subreddit may also be interesting)
My ThinkPad only has left USB-C, my M1 Air only has left USB-C, and I'm accustomed to left power from years of MacBooks.
The little built-in screen on the cable is only on one side.
Given that USB-C is Bi-directional, flipping it over would show the screen…
It's bidirectional so you can just twist the cable so the display is facing up..
- upside down the display is pointing towards the table (useless) - which you have a solution for
- upside down, the display is visible, but the text is rotated 180° (as people would say when a calculator is upside down) - you cannot twist your way out of this except facing the computer away from you (99=66, 70=0L 5537=LESS etc)
They are a bad gimic in every way.
They generate heat. They waste power. They create light pollution. They are distracting. Their measurement capabilities are often very limited or mediocre or don't update quickly. And finally they often burn out and stop working anyway.
If you want a USB power meter, buy one for $10 or less.
Marginal. A laptop display uses 1000x power and heat than these LCDs. Turning your brightness down for a few seconds saves the same amount.
> They create light pollution. They are distracting.
Personal preference, but for me it is no more distracting than the battery percentage icon next to my taskbar clock.
> Their measurement capabilities are often very limited or mediocre or don't update quickly.
The chip used in all the Aliexpress cables updates multiple times a second and is in line with my standalone power meter.
> And finally they often burn out and stop working anyway.
I'm using these as my daily drivers for all my USB C devices for over a year, and haven't had to replace them. Gave them as stocking stuffers to the family last Christmas and have heard no complaints.
Seems like these cables are (were) dirt-cheap.
USB cables already have an mpu in them unless they are simply USB 2 cables with a type C connector.
It doesn't take a lot of compute to encrypt at my typing rate. I'd expect high transfer rate devices to probably already have the hardware (e.g everyone at rest).
> $1.79 for "100W" model
Some instantaneous data are useful, for instance before going out in the morning a quick look at the thermometer might be useful. Many others are not. For me a more expensive cable just to have a display on it is useless, eventually collected consumption data per device and makes a nice Grafana dashboard of them might be useful or just wasted resources, but at least they go on a flexible machine I already own so it's not an extra hw costs.
However, how bright is that display? Enough to read in bed while your phone is charging on the nightstand? :)
Useful to get an idea how much your USB light draws and to check if your phone is really fast charging. I'd be careful with the numbers when the USB drives a more complicated load. Measuring the true power consumption of a microcontroller is surprisingly hard.
Sure the load can be very spiky and you have to sample fast enough to accurately integrate them. but that's doable given sufficient caps. Of course you'd end up with some filtered average instead of the instantaneous power, but that would be no good for a text display anyway.
This is a good enough "policy control" for the average consumer.
Tread with caution...the prospects of zombie grift tend to be real when brand recognition is established.
[1] https://usb.org/sites/default/files/vendor_ids051920_0.pdf
When baseline consumer behavior is sort-by-price-low-to-high and select the cheapest item from random pop-up white label chinesium third-party vendor on Amazon, exercising an ounce of supply chain due diligence where none previously existed can go a long way.
To be sure, if you think you can economically defend against a coordinated supply chain attack by a speculative adversary willing to pony up real capital operating an otherwise legitimate facade for years building market goodwill only to burn it all down in one shot against a single worthwhile target...well, I've got a bridge to sell you.
It's nice to one-off check a new cable to know what it can be used for, with the additional benefit of seeing the power curves for the higher models (e.g. see a charger's power output drastically drop down as it overheats)
Otherwise AVHzY is I think the recommended brand, with two levels or pricing depending if you want external output.
The normal PortaPow tells the device that it's a charger.
The extra paranoid version with no components on the board will often limit charging, it depends on how the device treats a complete lack of data pins.
But if you're worried then get one that has a resistor and only a resistor.
If you want to block attacks that use the external data pins, then a USB condom will keep you safe. Regardless of whether it has a chip in it.
If you want to block standalone attacks from a malicious cable, then a USB condom wasn't going to help in the first place. For standalone attacks in particular, the risk from a chip-having condom is similar to the risk from a cable, but a cable can use bigger and scarier chips than the one in the PortaPow.
Transparent casing, no-chip design and custom made USB connector with data pins visibly removed means you can be sure the blocker is secure.https://vapejuice.com/blogs/vape-juice-news/disposable-vape-...