>I also remember a case where a microcontroller would try to brick something when it detected a counterfeit cable You might be thinking of the big FTDI scandal

>I also remember a case where a microcontroller would try to brick something when it detected a counterfeit cable You might be thinking of the big FTDI scandal where they published a driver update for their chips that would attempt to detect a counterfeit FTDI chip and if it found one it would reconfigure the counterfeit chip with a bogus VID and PID thus rendering it essentially bricked. Bricking the cables using counterfeit chips wasn't the worst of it though, some of the chips in question were integrated into expensive equipment and rather than the manufacturer trying to use counterfeit FTDI chips they very well might be the victim being unwittingly sold counterfeits while paying the fraudster full price.