Snippet 2: Introduction to O.MG Cable

The O.MG Cable is a weaponized charging cable with a tiny Wi-Fi-equipped computer hidden in the connector. Dropped or swapped in for a real cable, it lets an attacker exfiltrate keystrokes and send commands over Wi-Fi from as far as two kilometers away, and it can be geofenced to activate only near a target network so it looks innocuous everywhere else. The cables cost under 200 dollars and have turned up at real customer sites.

Key Takeaways

• The O.MG Cable hides a Wi-Fi-capable computer inside an ordinary-looking USB cable
• It exfiltrates keystrokes and runs commands on the host over Wi-Fi from up to two kilometers away
• Geofencing can limit activation to the vicinity of a target network so it passes casual screening elsewhere
• Costing under 200 dollars and widely available, these cables have been found in the wild at customer facilities using Bastille

Video Transcript

There's been two companies-- high caliber red teaming companies that have produced these high quality cables that can do data exfiltration and command and control of victim devices. So that cable that you see on the screen there inside of the plastic casing on one end of this USB-C connector is actually a computer that has a Wi-Fi interface. So the attack model here is, you leave a cable lying around. Or if you have physical access to a facility, you plug in a cable, you replace an existing power cable.

And this cable gets plugged into a computer. Once it's plugged into a computer, the host victim computer, the computer inside of this USB cable can then control that computer and can do things like exfiltrate keystrokes or send commands into the host victim computer. And I'll show you a video demo of all this in a minute. So the attacker is doing that command and control, in this case over Wi-Fi. I'll show you a USB version of this in a second as well. So these cables cost less than $200. Again, they look completely innocuous.

They come in USB-C to USB-C, USB-A form factors, and lightning connector form factors. You can order one and have it at your doorstep three days later. So they're readily available. And you can see I took from the OMG product page their feature table. And so they've got some videos where they actually test the Wi-Fi access. So this thing spins up a Wi-Fi access point, and then the attacker joins that access point network and from there can do Command and control or exfiltration.

And they've demonstrated they can get these connections up to 2 kilometers away. They've got some neat features around geofencing, so the device you can tell it only activate when you're in this area. And you can define those areas based on whether a certain Wi-Fi access point is in that area. So if you're attacking, say, a corporate network, you may say as an attacker, you may program the cable to only activate when it's in the vicinity of that corporate network. So when it gets removed or before then, it looks completely innocuous.

And if it gets screened, then maybe no one realizes that this is actually an attacking device. So extremely interesting. We've heard about it in red team marketing, but we've actually seen these at customer sites now. So we've had customers find these things and find these things using their bastion system. And as you can imagine, those customers were very pleased to have bastion deployed because it let them find these otherwise innocuous-looking cables.