by transpute
3 subcomments
- For comparison, a "something else" cable without display: https://shop.hak5.org/products/omg-cable
> 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.
by i_have_to_speak
6 subcomments
- > The paranoid side of me suspects that a cable like this one would be an ideal place to hide a malicious chip.
Why hide a malicious chip in a cable with display -- why not in one without a display? Wouldn't that be more, uh, malicious?
- I had one of these and quite liked it. Then one day I plugged my phone in before bed as a million times before and the cable display popped and started emitting smoke.
by PaulKeeble
1 subcomments
- Due to the way the standards for power have gone there is substantial need for owning such a cable! Maybe when everything is USB C PD compatible and tested and works then devices might just charge at the right wattage as they are specified to. Alas so far I have had a lot of devices that refused to charge at anything higher than 7 watts despite USB C on both ends and a modern GAN 100W charger. The power standards for USB are a complete mess.
- Look for "power meter" if you want stuff like this. I bought this one a year ago: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B99Z2GJK/
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.
- > It is a bit stiff and hard to work with,
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 original USB-C spec called for cables to have optional displays to show why the cable had problems connecting. Did anyone every see one of those?
by twostorytower
0 subcomment
- And somebody will have Doom working on it soon!
- What I like for USB-C cables is not only a tester that tests how much power it can transmit but also what data rates. I wish I could get a device where I could plug in all my cables and it would rate them for me. Such a device probably exists and it probably costs thousands of dollars.
- I have a couple of these, one's in my laptop case, the other off a charger I carry everywhere. No less durable than a regular cable for a couple of years so far.
- These power meter cables have been out for a couple years, but it's only recently that manufacturers have caught on that previously the display would be upside down for most(?) people (or 100% of people who are me, anyway) when plugged in on the left side of the machine. Which I find hilarious, because the pictures in the AliExpress listings always showed the cable plugged in on the left, display upside down, like it was meant to be that way.
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.
by TwoNineFive
1 subcomments
- These have been on the market for years. I have a bunch of them.
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.
by omgtehlion
0 subcomment
- Couple years ago I have ordered a charger from ali, and similar cable was added “as a gift”. Pretty neat to quickly identify charging issues with various devices.
Seems like these cables are (were) dirt-cheap.
- > a cable like this one would be an ideal place to hide a malicious chip.
USB cables already have an mpu in them unless they are simply USB 2 cables with a type C connector.
- So they can make these, but manufacturers can't seem to figure out how to put a clear label on a cable that will tell you what flavor it is.
- I hope it stops there and we will have no cables standard with giving a tune when connected and disconnected, perhaps beeping at each 100M transferred or such. Too many gadgets and appliences want to be in the center of our attention and notifying us about all more or less significant actions of their life - like people on Facebook - by giving sound, flashing, sending messages to the phone and my wife's email and whatnot. I prefer my cables staying in the attention background by doing their job.
by theogravity
0 subcomment
- I went through two of these kind of USB-C cables bought from Amazon. They both broke within a matter of months. I'd wait until a reputable brand sells them.
by lallysingh
1 subcomments
- So shall we expect the USB protocol to go encrypted? The USB committee (I don't know their actual name) can act as a root CA.
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).
- Useful for lots of things - my earbuds have a really vague charging light, but if it says 0.00w I know it's done. I have a Nintendo Switch Pro Controller with a dodgy connection too, and it lets me know it's actually charging.
by justinator
1 subcomments
- Any good ones that would essentially replace a USB load tester? I'm thinking applications where I want to monitor power draw from a battery pack to say: a phone, or power being produced from a small solar panel (small, off the grid stuff)
- Well... Data are useful if we can collect and process them automatically, a display means you can read instantaneously (essentially useless 99% of the time) but not store and analyze.
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.
- I might eventually get some of these from the toy budget.
However, how bright is that display? Enough to read in bed while your phone is charging on the nightstand? :)
by weinzierl
2 subcomments
- "That’s when I found out that there exist cables that have little screens on them that show the power consumption of the connected device."
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.
by moneywoes
4 subcomments
- How do we know if these are doing something else?
by skywhopper
0 subcomment
- In terms of the risk of a “malicious chip”, that has nothing to do with the display or USB-C. Any cable could have a malicious chip in it at this point. USB-C cables require some chips to function so even if you take it apart you won’t know for sure what its little chips are doing. Good luck out there!
- Neat I remember seeing these on Marques Brownlee’s channel a couple times too.
[0] https://x.com/MKBHD/status/1478413987259822081
- If only device vendors clearly displayed the rate of charge making such cable useless...
- I've used some by an Aliexpress brand called Soopii for some time now. I broke one myself, the rest are still going strong after ~2 years, and power testing with an actual USB C tester, they're quite accurate.
- Is this really that innovative? I have been using one of these cables with a display in it for like three years now. I wouldn't say it's a new thing.
by tecleandor
1 subcomments
- I'd be very wary of a $7 cable that claims to be USB4.
- Rather buy a usb c power meter. They show amps voltage and watt so helps troubleshoot usb c stuff
- If only USB-C port was more sturdy.
by connerchyung
0 subcomment
- they make disposable vapes with display now too
https://vapejuice.com/blogs/vape-juice-news/disposable-vape-...
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