As another way of controlling the quality of their products, the lightning USB cables for Apple’s iPhone 5 and other latest products uses a special authentication chip that is supposed to be nearly impossible to crack. Now we have a look at several chips above that in fact are cracked authenticators that will allow the creation of cheap 3rd party cables.

This is bad news for Apple and partners that are licensing the technology in order to make official 3rd party accessories. As for consumers that don’t care about having cheap 3rd party accessories from China, this is great news.

Should you be surprised that the chip was cracked? Not really. Whenever there is something locked down like this, there is something that rises up to hack and crack it. How much cheaper these unofficial accessories are remains unseen, but don’t be shocked if they cost a fraction of the price of licensed cables.

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