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WiFi Hides Inside a USB Cable

hackaday.com

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Re: WiFi Hides Inside a USB Cable

#11

Post by muthdra »

TylerE wrote: post #6
itissid wrote: post #3

This is scary. I mean someone can just replace the cables in my house and my phones and computer would become infected. I can't even imagine the headache this does for company's cybersecurity practices. A rogue janitor replaces the usb cables on some of the employees of a company that makes $INSERT_SUPER SECRET_TECH$ and done.

How? I've never seen a device, certainly not a PC, that will just randomly connect to any router it sees without some sort of user input.

Any PC may randomly connect to any router it sees if it firmly believes that is the same router the user allowed it to connect last time.

Re: WiFi Hides Inside a USB Cable

#12

Post by userbinator »

tyingq wrote: post #5
userbinator wrote: post #2

The construction of this device is quite impressive, in that it fits entirely inside a USB plug The level of miniaturisation is not all that impressive, these have been around for a while: https://www.amazon.com/Edimax-EW-7811Un-150Mbps-Raspberry-Su... There's no mention of using the rest of the cable as the antenna, since in my experience the above tiny adapters have an equally tiny antenna and thus poor reception.

It says there's a microcontroller as well.

The ones in those tiny dongles have one too.

Re: WiFi Hides Inside a USB Cable

#13

Post by mehrdadn »

userbinator wrote: post #2

The construction of this device is quite impressive, in that it fits entirely inside a USB plug The level of miniaturisation is not all that impressive, these have been around for a while: https://www.amazon.com/Edimax-EW-7811Un-150Mbps-Raspberry-Su... There's no mention of using the rest of the cable as the antenna, since in my experience the above tiny adapters have an equally tiny antenna and thus poor reception.

> There's no mention of using the rest of the cable as the antenna, since in my experience the above tiny adapters have an equally tiny antenna and thus poor reception.

Not sure how far you were from your router but I bought one of these and it worked quite fine through walls.

Re: WiFi Hides Inside a USB Cable

#14

Post by blihp »

TylerE wrote: post #6
itissid wrote: post #3

This is scary. I mean someone can just replace the cables in my house and my phones and computer would become infected. I can't even imagine the headache this does for company's cybersecurity practices. A rogue janitor replaces the usb cables on some of the employees of a company that makes $INSERT_SUPER SECRET_TECH$ and done.

How? I've never seen a device, certainly not a PC, that will just randomly connect to any router it sees without some sort of user input.

Via the microcontroller embedded with the wifi adapter in the cable. It can effectively operate as a separate computer which uses the host PC parasitically for power and I/O.

Re: WiFi Hides Inside a USB Cable

#17

Post by quickthrower2 »

jayflux wrote: post #9

Does it just connect to the first WiFi which is t password protected? I’m assuming it’s useless if there’s no open WiFi about?

It creates a wifi hotspot and the attacker can connect to that using another device from a distance. They can then do stuff via the USB port, for example send key presses.

Re: WiFi Hides Inside a USB Cable

#18

Post by muthdra »

snazz wrote: post #10
TylerE wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? I've never seen a device, certainly not a PC, that will just randomly connect to any router it sees without some sort of user input.

My understanding is that it allows an attacker connected to it via WiFi to mess with the plugged-in computer using USB (pretending to be a keyboard). See the Twitter video: https://mg.lol/blog/omg-cable/

A secretly-IoT keyboard that shares your key presses and may "type" malicious stuff when you're not looking at it; the OS wouldn't be able to tell it's not you doing the typing. Not scary at all, no sir.

Re: WiFi Hides Inside a USB Cable

#19

Post by ecpottinger »

TylerE wrote: post #6
itissid wrote: post #3

This is scary. I mean someone can just replace the cables in my house and my phones and computer would become infected. I can't even imagine the headache this does for company's cybersecurity practices. A rogue janitor replaces the usb cables on some of the employees of a company that makes $INSERT_SUPER SECRET_TECH$ and done.

How? I've never seen a device, certainly not a PC, that will just randomly connect to any router it sees without some sort of user input.

Who needs access to a router, just sniffing for passwords this would work.

Put in the right machine and you can see every company memo as it is written.

Re: WiFi Hides Inside a USB Cable

#20

Post by rwmj »

itissid wrote: post #3

This is scary. I mean someone can just replace the cables in my house and my phones and computer would become infected. I can't even imagine the headache this does for company's cybersecurity practices. A rogue janitor replaces the usb cables on some of the employees of a company that makes $INSERT_SUPER SECRET_TECH$ and done.

In secure locations it's common for USB ports to be physically blocked (the ones I've seen with glue/resin).
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