[SecurityRatty] tag: copper

Wee-Fi: Mumbai Blast Leads to Open Network; NullRiver's App Nullified; Copper Substitute

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 05:56:36 +0000

Mumbai man's open wireless network used to send bomb claim: An American expatriate, Kenneth Haywood, left his Wi-Fi network open in Mumbai, and police allege it was used to send email claiming responsibility for a bomb blast that killed 42 people. The Guardian reports that Haywood says his email account was also hacked. Police say that someone would need to be within two floors of the 15th-floor apartment Haywood and others occupy, but they may be disregarding high-gain antennas. Haywood's installer demanded he not change his network password.

iPhone tethering application up, down, up, down: The NetShare connection-sharing application from NullRiver has made a couple of appearances on Apple's App Store, the only authorized place from which owners of iPod touch and iPhone devices can purchase software for uncracked equipment. NetShare appears to violate the terms of service for AT&T, although this wouldn't be the case with all carriers worldwide, by bridging 2.5G and 3G network traffic via the Wi-Fi connection on the iPhone. A laptop or desktop needs special configuration to connect to the iPhone, but various reports show it works fine. AT&T offers tethering with other smartphones - but not the iPhone - for typically about $20 more per month, comparable to a national hotspot aggregated subscription.

Speaking of AT&T, they like WiMax as a wire alternative: AT&T is bullish on WiMax, but the fixed kind used to replace wires in places they have no cable.

Interop NY 2008 Hot Stage: A Tale of Two Cities

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:01:04 +0000

For the past week I’ve been in Freemont California (outside San Jose) with the InteropNet Team getting the network back up after Vegas so that it’s ready for New York. This Hot Stage has been interesting because it really has been about the difference in the shows in Las Vegas and New York. The show in New York is a bit smaller, but because access to the venue (Javitz Center) is more restrictive than the access the team gets in Vegas (Mandalay Bay), things need to be done differently.

The big difference between the two cities is the amount of time that the InteropNet team gets to produce a live, fully operational and redundant network. In Las Vegas, this was nearly a full week of time - a tight timeframe across 17 different vendors, but now we’re looking back at that timeframe as a luxury. In NY, we’ll be getting started Saturday morning, and the network needs to be delivered on Sunday morning for the registration desk and exhibitor move-in to begin. If you’re keeping score, that’s about 24 hours to deliver a working network. Sounds hard, but it’s even harder when you consider that this means four DS-3s from two different locations, 17 full and 7 half racks of network gear, all the fiber and copper that the network is delivered over, etc all have to get done. Good thing that with 2 and 3/4 kids, I’m not planning on much sleep, and I don’t think the rest of the team is either.

In order to try and get the network delivered in that short timeframe, we worked hard at Hot Stage to assure that everything is ready to go. With some luck, the work that we’ve done here will allow us simply to roll the network gear into place, run the cables, fire up and go.

Now, things never really work out that way but that’s what EM7 is going to be there for. We’ll watch in real time as the network elements come live and be able to let the other InteropNet vendors know if their gear isn’t behaving as expected or is not visible for all the areas of the network that it should be. We’ll keep track of all of this in the EM7 ticketing system so that after the show we’ll be able to analyze the behavior of the network and systems as we did after Vegas.

I’m looking forward to the show and once again working with some of the top engineers in the country on a complex and rapidly deployed network. Speaking of which, we’re still looking for volunteers to help in the NOC. Volunteers get to work with some really smart people, get an education that would be hard to get anywhere else, and get a trip to NY where your expenses (for things like hotel accommodations and food provided by the show) are taken care of. Sound interesting? Be sure and check out the application.

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Lompoc's Comeback

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 06:57:35 +0000

I've been citing Lompoc, Calif., as a poster child of what can go wrong in municipal Wi-Fi for a few years: But I apparently have to change my tune. Lompoc, near Santa Barbara, had unreasonable expectations, if you read their first and second RFPs. The first provider built a network that Lompoc found unacceptable and they bid it out for a second network to be built (some of these details are murky and some under dispute).

What's been clear is that after spending more than $3m, the city couldn't acquire more than a few hundred regular subscribers, about 10 percent of the point they'd need to pay expenses and pay down capital outlay. But it turns out that the backend was as important as their network deployment, IDG News Service reports.

The latest city network administrator brought in Aptilo Networks for backend authentication and session processing, opened the network to 15-minute free trials, and started accepted ad hoc payment. The new network guru also let outsourced contracts expire and brought customer support and other services back in house to reduce expenses and improve the feedback loop. He discovered their existing authentication system was licensed for 500 users, so that might have explained their failure to grow, too.

The city now has 1,000 regular users at all levels, from pay-as-you-go to monthly household subscriptions. They've revised breakeven down to 2,000 subscribers, and say they are breakeven for expenses.

The other problem Lompoc had, by the way, is that the cable and telephone companies didn't sit still. I exaggerate, but when Lomopoc was planning its network, it had very poor coverage for its 42,000 residents for DSL and cable modem service. When the Wi-Fi network was announced, the incumbents started pulling copper, coax, and fiber, and dramatically improved network coverage. The $3m wasn't entirely ill spent so far: it was a kind of reverse incentive to the private companies to get their act together.

Beware! $4 + a gallon is bringing out the thieves in our communities.

Sat, 31 May 2008 00:53:00 +0000

We recently alerted our readers to watch out for copper piping, wiring and even art pieces that were being stolen by thieves looking to cash in on the rising price of copper. It was only a matter of time before the same thing happened to the fuel tanks on our vehicles.

Neil Cavuto ran a story on Fox's "Cavuto World" today about thieves who are even going so far as to drill into tanks in an effort to steal a vehicle's fuel. Gasoline, Dielsel and even greasy cooking oil is being stolen. That's right - cooking oil.

I first heard that old cooking oil could be used to run a car on from my brother in Northern Ireland about four or five years ago. There was very little start-up costs involved and being the owner of a restaurant, he had a ready supply of used oil. He told me at that at that time, people were converting their vehicles to run on the oil and were going around gathering up used oil from restaurants. The owners of these establishments were thrilled since they used to pay to have the old oil removed previously.

Apparently this recycling of cooking oil has become so popular, that restaurants are now selling it - last I heard for about $1.50 a gallon. Thieves have discovered its worth and are now draining the oil tanks located at the rear of restaurants. The report went on to say that SUVs are especially being targeted as their size gives the thieves plenty of good cover. The fact that their tanks are larger and contain more fuel is an added advantage for them.

What can you do? For starters, if your fuel cap is not lockable, replace it with one that can be locked. If at all possible, keep your vehicle in a locked garage. If that is not an option, park it in a well lit area. Unfortunately, the higher the prices go at the pump, the more prevalent that fuel thefts will become.

Copper Thieves are the New Gold Diggers

Sun, 11 May 2008 22:15:00 +0000

Be careful if your property contains a lot of visible copper. Thieves are cashing in on the rising price of copper.

In one case, two men tried to sell copper caps to a scrap metal dealer in Chicago. The dealer became suspicious and notified Police. The two men worked at a munitions factory and the copper they were trying to sell were casings from 1.5 million rounds of ammunition. One of them is now facing a prison sentence of 245 years for stealing from the military during wartime.

In Hot Springs, Arkansas, 2,000 customers, a Wal-Mart, a mall and a hospital lost power when thieves hit an electric sub-station on April 27. Last year, we took over security at a site for a client where theives were stripping copper from electrical lines. Similar incidents are taking place all over the country. Thieves are getting so desperate that they are willing to risk getting electrocuted in order to steal the valuable metal.

Burglaries have risen by 18% so far this year throughout the District of Columbia and Police detectives are attributing much of it to the theft of copper wiring and piping. During the past 2 weeks, thieves have hit construction sites in Germantown, Clarksburg and Potomac. It is getting so bad that outdoor sculptures are starting to disappear. In Brea, California, city officials have contacted owners of bronze sculptures and advised them to step up security.

In 2000, the average price of copper was $0.83 per pound. Eight years later, the rate has jumped to $3 - $4 per pound.

Bad Phorm

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 11:26:32 +0000

The prospect of behavorial-based advertising is something we should all be concerned about and something we should all be strongly voicing an objection to. Phorm, the company offering such a service as part of their Webwise product, have engaged with BT, Virgin, and Talk Talk for trials of the servcie. Read about it here. Personal security and privacy of data are not the only issues here.

The BT spokesman said Phorm offered consumers two benefits. "Customers will receive more relevant advertising and will get warnings if any of the websites they visits are known to be phishing sites."

I'd like to meet a BT customer who wants more relevant advertising. I'd prefer BT to be blocking all advertising - I damn well pay them enough for use of the copper wire across which the content I actually do want has to crawl like treacle. The last thing I need is for my precious bandwidth to be inundated with advertising. Even more so for my children - what targeted advertising will appear on the screen when they're on line? Phorm have apparently gone to great lengths to ensure the legality of their "service" having spoken at great length to the Home Office to make sure that its scheme doesn't break RIPA (the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act). However, surely once you have in place a system that's capable of intercepting traffic for any purpose other than routing between the ISP and the end-user, then in my mind you're also opening up that same system to the risk of abuse. There's some good commentary on the issues on this blog here.

While Phorm and the ISPs signing up say users will be able to opt out, but they don’t say whether everyone will be opted out or in automatically by default, I strongly suspect everyone will be opted in as a matter of course, here’s why. If you were to ask the users to opt in with this form advertising, I’m pretty sure just about everyone would say no thank you! Which for me answers the question to whether this is a good idea or not, in fact I’ve seen one Virgin forum (cableforum.co.uk) poll that stated 95% of users would want to opt out. I’ve also heard that if Phorm don’t have millions of users signing up, the whole system would not be viable, so we can be pretty sure everyone will be signed up by default.

More good words here:

The thing that puzzles me most about Phorm is their description of the Webwise system, which presents it primarily as an anti-fraud technology. This leaves an impression that its real purpose is somewhat hidden. I suppose this is because nobody really like adverts, especially not the ones intruding with the content of the page we wanted to see.