Next time you purchase a USB cable – or take a free one from a kiosk – you might want to make sure it doesn’t track everything you type. A cable that’s capable of doing that is now available, courtesy of a pseudonymous cybersecurity researcher who goes by the name MG.

MG told Motherboard that the so-called OMG cable appears to be just like any other, except for a tiny computer that is capable of automatically record every single keystroke while it’s connected and can transmit them to a hacker.

OMG cable already available

“There were people who said that Type C cables were safe from this type of implant because there isn’t enough space. So, clearly, I had to prove that wrong. :),” MG told Motherboard.

MG is already mass-producing the OMG cable and selling it through the hacking community shop Hak5. As the product listing suggests, the cable features a web server, radio, and tiny processors all hidden within the wire itself.

To test it out, Motherboard reporter Joseph Cox used the OMG cable, a USB-C to Lightning cable to be precise, to connect his keyboard to a Mac computer. A demo video shows a phone the interface of the cable capturing each and every keystroke the reporter typed. MG also told the news outlet that a hacker can run the interface from any web browser once connected to the cable’s Wi-Fi hotspot.

Preventing cybercrimes

Similarly, IBM recently showcased its new Telum processor, which will come with its next-gen IBM Z systems. Along with 8 cores and a huge amount of L2 cache, the processor packs a dedicated AI accelerator that is capable of detecting fraud in real-time.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) received 4.7 million reports of fraud in 2020, with $3.3 billion in total losses. Telum addresses this issue in real-time. The company used credit card transactions as an example, saying that the processor can detect a fraudulent transaction before it even completes.