Kevin McCoy, USA Today:
The knockoff power adapters and chargers, which Apple says could cause electrical shocks, allegedly traveled from a manufacturer in Hong Kong to Amazon.com, with stopping points at the Brooklyn location and New Jersey electronics companies.
And:
From outward appearances, the Apple-like products seemed genuine.
However, the chargers and adapters lacked adequate insulation and had improper spacing between the high voltage and low voltage circuits, creating risks of overheating, fire or electrical shocks, Apple charged in a 2016 federal court lawsuit. The case ended with confidential settlements in late May.
And:
Twelve of 400 fake iPhone adapters tested in a study unrelated to those in Apple’s lawsuit were so badly constructed that they posed “a risk of lethal electrocution to the user,” U.S.-based safety standards leader UL warned.
When I first came across this article, I was pretty sure Amazon would be part of the equation. In addition to the obvious safety hazard issues, I also wonder if there are some counterfeits with embedded malware, just waiting for an unsuspecting device to be plugged in. One reason I zealously guard the USB bricks that come in the iPhone and Apple Watch boxes.
It be nice if you could somehow scan the third-party device with an iPhone using RFID, or something, and determine whether it is legit or not.
How long before that trick is reverse-engineered by knockoff makers? 😉
It would be hard to hack if engineered properly. e.g., you have a signature with a private key that only Apple knows, and Apple’s public key will only validate appropriate signatures.
In fact, one could make this part of the Lightning and MFI protocols. Maybe that’s what Apple should do, but I think it would unfortunately be too controversial at this point.
I’d still love to see it happen.
I’d expect it to take about a week for someone in China to copy the challenge/response data from a real unit and clone that into their own controller.
Doing it in a way they couldn’t would increase the price far more than it would ever be worth, I’d think.
(I mean, I WANT my phone to be able to work with Any Random USB Power Source for charging!
“But some ultra-cheap knockoffs are dangerous” doesn’t change that one bit.)
Yes, you’d need some kind of serial number tracking/uniqueness/lookup for this to work.
And, as you point out, the biggest problem is people _don’t_ want that.
Life would be a lot easier if Amazon didn’t actively enable dangerous knockoff manufacturers…
Life would be a lot easier for a lot of folks if Amazon didn’t actively do a lot of things that have made it so powerful.