So a short between the power and ground wires would be bad.
Seems like this should be part of testing for a good/bad cable.
For that type of cable design, I'd use an entirely different testing methodology.
The cable is essentially two loops from the perspective of the "far" end.
A "black" loop and a "red" loop.
If you hook 4 Arduino pins to the 4 separate wires on the "far" end of the cable, you could check for
continuity in each loop as well as for a short between the two loops
with nothing connected to the other end of the cable since the other end of the cable already has
connections that are crimped together on the "close" end.
--- bill