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WiFi Hides Inside a USB Cable

hackaday.com

31–40 of 159 posts

Re: WiFi Hides Inside a USB Cable

#31
post #28

Would a high voltage loop, for breaking components, be a good solution to an attack like this? Like, fry the electronic components to verify it's just plain metal on the insides?

Perhaps, but it could start a fire. You might consider plugging into a power supply and measuring if there is any current draw.

Re: WiFi Hides Inside a USB Cable

#32

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.

I have this adapter, works well with a router two levels above.

Re: WiFi Hides Inside a USB Cable

#34
post #18
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It can't read your keypresses (I think)

Re: WiFi Hides Inside a USB Cable

#35

I guess even some sort of "signed device protocol" will not work. An attacker can just create a device that guesses the device identifier (or whatever is used to create the signature). Then, the attacker device can just keep guessing until it gets it right. Chances are, some serial number or similar will be used for this, so continuous guessing is feasible. Will the solution to this, then, be to have some sort of "sm…

On Windows XP this would display a “new device: keyboard connected” balloon and the Safely Remove Device icon would immediately set-off my spidersense - it’s unfortunate that newer releases of Windows hide those notifications by default and the only clue that something might be wrong would be hearing the generic device connected sound multiple times in quick succession which many users might think was their sound-card glitching.

I think a solution is for OSs to only allow the automatic mounting of newly-attached devices if they’re “passive” (e.g. mass storage - assuming no autorun.ini, output-only devices, HID class devices that only expose game-controller functionality, etc) - other device classes like mice and keyboards plugged-in to non-trusted ports should always require explicit approval.

While we’re on the subject: keyboards can be massively improved by adding over-the-wire encryption to prevent keyboard-port logging, and the USB keyboard class should be extended to include the keyboard declaring its layout to the host OS. It’s silly that we still need to configure keyboard language settings or that the OS infers it from our regional settings.

Re: WiFi Hides Inside a USB Cable

#37
post #34
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It can't read your keypresses (I think)

It can't (unless it's the keyboard cable).

Re: WiFi Hides Inside a USB Cable

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So they have to be close by.

https://www.simplewifi.com/products/parabolic-grid

"2.4Ghz wifi antenna extends a 7 degree wide cone, allowing it to perform over large distances up to 8 miles of range."

Re: WiFi Hides Inside a USB Cable

#39
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.

>I mean someone can just replace the cables in my house and my phones and computer would become infected.

Only if you leave your computer unlocked and unattended. If it's attended, obviously you'll see something's going on and pull the plug on the computer and probably investigate further. If your computer is locked (which is a good habit to have when leaving your workstation, the faked keyboard can't do.

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