iPhone 13 user? BEWARE! This cable can Steal your money! Know how to protect yourself from online scam

When you charge your iPhone 13 the next time, be careful. It could be an attack hardware designed to hack your system and steal your money. Find out how to protect yourself from this online scam.

This company manufactures these iPhone 13 Lightning cable lookalike hacking devices that can easily steal your money. Save yourself from online scam. (MINT_PRINT)

Picture this. You're outdoors and need to charge your iPhone 13. But there are no outlets available. So, you decide to use your laptop to charge the smartphone. You plug it in with a lightning cable that you just borrowed from someone and get back to work. You may have opened your social media to check notification, you might have made an online payment or just logged into your personal email account to reply to mails. And then, you leave your device for five minutes to go talk to a friend or go to the washroom. Once you're back, you find all the money from your bank account gone!

To make it worse, you have lost access to your social media and email account and someone is posting incriminating content on them. Reported by Forbes, let us check out this equal parts innovative and dangerous technology.

All of this can be done using one Lightning cable, and you will never suspect a thing. What is this new hacking device and how can it be used to steal your money? Read on to find out. Also check how to protect your iPhone 13 from this online scam.

An iPhone 13 Lightning cable can hack your device

While this technology has existed for a while and hackers all over the world use it to their advantage, according to Forbes, a company called O.MG has made these attack hardwares that look like USB storage, Lightning cables, Lightning to USB-C adapters, android USB cables that look like the charging cable for Samsung devices and more. The company is not trying to run online scams on people, however. It is a security research firm that sells these devices to spread awareness about the vulnerabilities that exist in our devices. In fact, selling these products are completely legal as well. If you'd like check out their vendor website here.

The logic behind this type of hacking is simple. While our modern devices are pretty adept at fighting against hacking attempts when it comes from virtual sources, they are very trusting of any physically connected devices. In fact, the O.MG cables do not even display the “unrecognized USB” warning because they have been programmed to appear as if it is manufactured by an official source. And once you connect your iPhone 13 to the laptop or PC, it's game over.

How it works is pretty ingenious. The small USB adapter contains a wireless network that allows a remote device to connect from up to 2,000 meters away. Once it has been plugged in, the hacker's smartphone gets directly connected to the victim's laptop and he can now not only deliver malicious payloads but also read every single word typed on the device through a keylogger. This means everything from financial details and social media passwords will be on the fingertips of the hacker. And the poor victim will believe that he was just charging his iPhone 13. So, how can one protect themselves from this online scam?

How to avoid the Lightning cable hacking attempts How to avoid the Lightning cable hacking attempts

Step 1:

Always be wary of the cable you use to connect your smartphone with the laptop. If possible, add some sort of an identifier so you always know if someone replaces it.

Step 2:

Try not to use anyone else’s USB cables on your device, especially if the person is not trusted.

Step 3:

Try not to connect your laptop with your device when you’re outdoors.

Step 4:

The same company also sells hacking device detectors, so you can always buy it from there and always know when something shady is going on.