Lightning cable for hacking a computer on macOS is on sale

This year’s Def Con conference showed a Lightning cable for the iPhone, with which an attacker could gain remote access to a computer. Now this cable can be purchased for $200.

“My project raised serious interest and I was helped in every way in its implementation. There were many requests for the purchase of this cable”, – comments the developer of the modified cable, known under the pseudonym MG.

MG first demonstrated its new creation, a malicious cable called O.MG cable, developed with the support of several more talented engineers at the beginning this year. Such a cable does not look different from the usual one, and it can be connected to a machine running Linux, MacOS or Windows.

However, in reality, the O.MG cable is not at all so simple and is defined by the system as a HID (Human Interface Device), that is, a USB device for interacting with a person (usually a keyboard, mouse, game controller, and so on). Since MG added to its development and support for wireless connections, as a result, by connecting the O.MG cable to the target machine, the attacker is able to execute any commands via Wi-Fi, as if he simply types them on the keyboard of the target computer.

“It’s like sitting with the victim’s keyboard and mouse, but not physically being there”, – MG said.

O.MG cable comes with ready-made payloads, and its operator even has the ability remotely “kill” a USB implant, sweeping tracks.

Currently (with a direct connection to the cable), the attacker can be located within a radius of about 90 meters from his target, but MG emphasizes that the cable can also be configured to work as a client in the nearest wireless network. If this wireless network has Internet access, the distance for the attack becomes unlimited.

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The researcher said that reworking the original Apple cables by hand proved to be a daunting task, but if you make the cables from scratch and on a larger scale, this problem will disappear by itself (while MG takes about 4 hours to assemble one cable).