Get Ready For a Most Secure Power Supply For Your Laptop

Get Ready For a Most Secure Power Supply For Your Laptop

With the increasing number of devices that connect to our computer using USB-C, it is surprising that these devices do not often properly authenticate themselves. Imagine, then, if someone put a backdoor Trojan into your power supply, so that every time that you plugged it in, it could scan your computer or even access your Webcam.

Within USB Authentication Specification Rev. 1.0 with ECN and Errata through January 7, 2019 [here], we now see a standard developing for the usage of device authentication. This standard includes a digital certificate which contains the public key of the signer, and signed by a trusted entity:

As you see the digital certificate is created with Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC). Then the device receives a challenge, and then itself will have a private key in which it signs for its identity:

So, hopefully, so time soon, we will see power supplies properly authenticating themselves to our computers.