4 ms·

What is the moral calculus of counterfeiters? Fake power adapters can kill.

by mensetmanusman 3y ago

AlecSchueler 3y ago
Poverty and desperation can often drive people to bend their moral compass quite a bit.
- JCharante 3y ago
  How many people knowledgeable to mass produce fake chargers are in poverty? My assumption is that it's greed.
  - autoexec 3y ago
    Wasn't it just two years ago that apple was caught using slaves? And that was after years of their factories and suppliers abusing children and keeping workers in inhumane living and working conditions. I think we can pretty much guarantee that a massive number of people who are intimately familiar with making apple products, including chargers, are living in poverty. Some people at Foxconn were even caught selling genuine apple parts that failed QA to be used in making counterfeit apple products.
- askonomm 3y ago
  I tend to believe that a moral compass is a made-up social invention. Children don't have it. We have to teach them these made up rules, how you should feel when you do something against those rules, etc. We ingrain it deep into you much like how religion is ingrained deep into young people, so that by the time you are an adult that's all you know, and it seems to work well, most people never even second guess these things.
  - mportela 3y ago
    As most things in life, it is more complicated than that. While the environment plays a major role in people's moral codes, there seems to be at least some innate development happening too. I'm not a trained psychologist but I've seen scientific evidence on some of these behaviors already showing up in babies as young as a few weeks old, suggesting some of the things we consider to be culturally nurtured can actually be part of the species as a whole. Netflix has an easy-to-digest docu-series called Babies and episode S0204 talks about that, if you're interested. [1] https://www.netflix.com/title/80117833 https://www.netflix.com/title/80117833
    - askonomm 3y ago
      Oh nice, will give that episode a watch! Thank you. If it's true we also have some built-in moral compass by default, it certainly would improve my worldview from bleak to a bit better.
JCharante 3y ago
It would be cool if they could put a chip inside the chargers and have the charger communicate over USB C whether it's authentic or not. Of course you could still use third party chargers that would lack this chip, but for people who like first party chargers or buying chargers from reputable brands (that would probably license this from Apple) it would be nice.
- MereInterest 3y ago
  Anything that can be communicated by an authentic charger could also be communicated by a counterfeit charger. You may have raised the cost of the scam (e.g. by requiring another chip), or delayed the start of a scam (e.g. until the inevitable leak of hardward signing keys), but at the end of the day you're trying to validate a device through a communication channel controlled by that very same device. It's the same problem as with the satirical "evil bit" proposal for IPv4 [0]: Someone who is scamming you has already shown no compunction against lying to you through social means, and will lie to you through technical means as well. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_bit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_bit
  - JCharante 3y ago
    Couldn’t the chip have a HSM that signs requests to authenticate that it’s authentic? Data is already exchanged during the USB charging handshake, this could just be one extra step. The key might leak, which is why you could have a new key everyday that’s signed by an intermediate key and these are internet connected devices (iphones and macbooks and ipads) that could easily download a key block-list for a kilobyte everyday. Additionally, if the device has already connected to a charger in the past but then the key gets revoked, it could continue to show it’s authentic across their devices connected to their iCloud account, much like how wifi passwords and airpods just sync across devices.
    - rcxdude 3y ago
      Solving the key-leaking issue is usually done by having a unique per-device key in the HSM, and having an online database that can be checked for authenticity. Then cloning a device requires pulling out an HSM, and if you do sucessfully pull the key off that it becomes suspicious that many different devices have the same key, and it can be blacklisted. This is what google uses (anticompetitively, in my mind) to force people to use geniune chromecasts.

What is the moral calculus of counterfeiters? Fake power adapters can kill.

AlecSchueler 3y ago

Poverty and desperation can often drive people to bend their moral compass quite a bit.

JCharante 3y ago
How many people knowledgeable to mass produce fake chargers are in poverty? My assumption is that it's greed.
- autoexec 3y ago
  Wasn't it just two years ago that apple was caught using slaves? And that was after years of their factories and suppliers abusing children and keeping workers in inhumane living and working conditions. I think we can pretty much guarantee that a massive number of people who are intimately familiar with making apple products, including chargers, are living in poverty. Some people at Foxconn were even caught selling genuine apple parts that failed QA to be used in making counterfeit apple products.
askonomm 3y ago
I tend to believe that a moral compass is a made-up social invention. Children don't have it. We have to teach them these made up rules, how you should feel when you do something against those rules, etc. We ingrain it deep into you much like how religion is ingrained deep into young people, so that by the time you are an adult that's all you know, and it seems to work well, most people never even second guess these things.
- mportela 3y ago
  As most things in life, it is more complicated than that. While the environment plays a major role in people's moral codes, there seems to be at least some innate development happening too. I'm not a trained psychologist but I've seen scientific evidence on some of these behaviors already showing up in babies as young as a few weeks old, suggesting some of the things we consider to be culturally nurtured can actually be part of the species as a whole. Netflix has an easy-to-digest docu-series called Babies and episode S0204 talks about that, if you're interested. [1] https://www.netflix.com/title/80117833 https://www.netflix.com/title/80117833
  - askonomm 3y ago
    Oh nice, will give that episode a watch! Thank you. If it's true we also have some built-in moral compass by default, it certainly would improve my worldview from bleak to a bit better.

JCharante 3y ago

It would be cool if they could put a chip inside the chargers and have the charger communicate over USB C whether it's authentic or not. Of course you could still use third party chargers that would lack this chip, but for people who like first party chargers or buying chargers from reputable brands (that would probably license this from Apple) it would be nice.

MereInterest 3y ago
Anything that can be communicated by an authentic charger could also be communicated by a counterfeit charger. You may have raised the cost of the scam (e.g. by requiring another chip), or delayed the start of a scam (e.g. until the inevitable leak of hardward signing keys), but at the end of the day you're trying to validate a device through a communication channel controlled by that very same device. It's the same problem as with the satirical "evil bit" proposal for IPv4 [0]: Someone who is scamming you has already shown no compunction against lying to you through social means, and will lie to you through technical means as well. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_bit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_bit
- JCharante 3y ago
  Couldn’t the chip have a HSM that signs requests to authenticate that it’s authentic? Data is already exchanged during the USB charging handshake, this could just be one extra step. The key might leak, which is why you could have a new key everyday that’s signed by an intermediate key and these are internet connected devices (iphones and macbooks and ipads) that could easily download a key block-list for a kilobyte everyday. Additionally, if the device has already connected to a charger in the past but then the key gets revoked, it could continue to show it’s authentic across their devices connected to their iCloud account, much like how wifi passwords and airpods just sync across devices.
  - rcxdude 3y ago
    Solving the key-leaking issue is usually done by having a unique per-device key in the HSM, and having an online database that can be checked for authenticity. Then cloning a device requires pulling out an HSM, and if you do sucessfully pull the key off that it becomes suspicious that many different devices have the same key, and it can be blacklisted. This is what google uses (anticompetitively, in my mind) to force people to use geniune chromecasts.