There's no good reason to suspect these are authentication chips. See, e.g. http://brockerhoff.net/blog/2012/09/23/boom-pins/ http://brockerhoff.net/blog/2012/0

There's no good reason to suspect these are authentication chips. See, e.g. http://brockerhoff.net/blog/2012/09/23/boom-pins/ http://brockerhoff.net/blog/2012/09/23/boom-pins/ Just like Thunderbolt, the chip is most likely used to make the cable adaptive (so that all pins can be used for data, or power, as-needed). Quoting the author: I really see no justification for the “authentication chip” hypothesis, and even their diagram doesn’t show any single “power pin of the Lightning plug”. It’s clear that, once the cable’s type has been negotiated with the device, and the device has checked if there’s a charger, a peripheral or a computer on the other end, the power input from the USB side is switched to however many pins are required to carry the available current.