Just what's in that cabinet?

As a professional in the cabling industry who has spent countless hours in telecommunications rooms and the enclosures/cabinets within those rooms, you may very well believe that you have seen it all.

The clever marketing folks at Automated Outlet are betting you have not seen it all. They have posted on YouTube a video showing a cabinet for structured wiring that houses ... no, not cabling. Liquor. The "Cool Home Automation Liquor Cabinet Using Structured Wiring" is made up of parts available from Automated Outlet. Although I bet the liquor is sold separately.

It's a simple concept and the video tour is only 30 seconds in duration. You can check it out below.

First the cable was fake, now the conference is

For some time we've been reporting on incidents of bogus cable, typically twisted-pair copper cable, popping up around the world and usually originating in Asia. At this point, that's not really brand-new news anymore. But over the past week I became aware of something that is new: A fake conference about wire and cable.

From what I can tell, the purported "China Wire & Cable Industry Summit 2011" looks like an effort to obtain credit-card information. A flyer has been circulated for a conference with that aforementioned title, supposedly being held in Shanghai November 25 and 26 of this year. The flyer includes a full two-day agenda with realistic-sounding session titles and descriptions. And, the agenda includes the names of actual companies and people, claiming they will participate in the conference. Except, from all I can tell, these people and companies don't know a thing about the conference they're supposedly a part of.

The last page of the brochure is a registration form seeking credit card and passport information.

Adding to the confusion for some who have been contacted about this apparently non-existent event is the fact that there is a real event taking place October 26-28 in Shanghai. That event is called the China International Wire and Cable Industry Exhibition and is legitimate.

I feel like Charlie Brown because all I can think to say is: Good grief.

Modified U.S. Army drone spies on WiFi users

Several news outlets, including this report from CNET, told the story this week about the security engineers who showed off an unmanned aerial vehicle that can spy on WiFi users. The demonstration took place at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas.

The engineers, Mike Tassey and Rich Perkins, did not conduct a live demonstration of the drone's capabilities. But they did bring it out on stage and told some frightening stories about what they had been able to accomplish by adding their own touches to it. Among those "touches" are "a payload of wireless sniffers and network-cracking tools," CNET's Declan McCullagh reported. McCullagh also quoted Perkins as saying, "We can identify a target by his cell phone and follow him home to where enterprise security doesn't reach. We can reverse engineer someone's life."

Perkins and Tassey call the drone WASP - Wireless Aerial Surveillance Platform. A test flight has been posted on YouTube.