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.

House explosions blamed on copper-cable theft

According to this report from The Daily Mail, a row of houses in Castleton, West Yorkshire, UK exploded literally seconds after firefighters evacuated the residents. The causes of the string of blasts, firefighters told The Daily Mail, was the theft of copper electrical cable overhead. That theft "affected the earthing of the area's electrical network," the report says.

Astonishing footage of the explosions was captured by a camera mounted to one of the firefighting vehicles. The footage was posted to YouTube.

You can see it below. The video includes multiple explosions and is slightly more than one minute in duration.

More tips for detecting counterfeit cables

Since the Fiber Optic Association published an item in its July 2011 newsletter about weighing copper cable to help determine if its conductors are copper or aluminum, the association has gotten a number of suggestions from professionals in the industry about that and other methods of counterfeit detection.

UPDATE (7/27): I have learned that most of the comments/tips provided to the FOA, and summarized here, came from James Mitchell, who operates a website called helpmecableguy.

Among the comments are the following.

1) Some cable brands include a plastic spool in the box, which adds 2 to 4 pounds to the box. And some generic cable brands can weigh as much as 25 to 30 pounds for bulk Cat 5e UTP. These differences may make it more difficult to detect a counterfeit, because even if lighter aluminum conductors are used the overall weight of the box could be close to that of a legit, copper-conductor cable.

2) Look for the holographic UL sticker (although it's also noted that holographic stickers are sometimes found on counterfeit CDs and DVDs).

3) From a street vendor in China (no kidding): Cut the wires into small sections and try picking them up with a magnet.

4) The newsletter update also expresses the importance of flammability ratings being genuine, in addition to the cable's performance characteristics.

You can read the updated FOA July 2011 newsletter here; it includes more detailed comments than those summarized in this post.

Cable-theft attempt kills 16-year-old boy

BBC has reported that a 16-year-old boy was killed in Stourton, UK on Sunday, July 3 while apparently attempting to steal copper cable and components from a power station.

The news agency identified the electrocution victim as Ryan Woolams.

The power station is owned and operated by CE Electric UK. That company told BBC it had dealt with 279 incidents of metal theft within the past year.

CE Electric UK's head of safety Geoff Earl made a plea for would-be thieves to consider the potentially tragic consequences of their actions.

You can read BBC's coverage here.

Talk about an underground crime operation

I'm not sure if the attempted theft of copper cable is more prevalent in the United Kingdom than it is in the United States, or if the U.K. news media pays more attention to the crime than does the news media in this country. Either way, I never go too long without hearing about such a theft, or attempted theft, somewhere in the U.K.

Not long ago we told you about the young man who was nearly electrocuted while trying to steal copper cable from an electrical substation. The permanently scarred culprit spoke remorsefully at his sentencing.

Now I hear about the enterprising 33-year-old from Glasgow who made it look like he was supposed to be working in manholes while he was trying to make off with some of BT's copper cable.

According to reporting by The Courier (which takes you to the heart of Tayside and Fife), Dean Monaghan put on reflective clothing, erected a worker's tent, and put up signs and cones around manhole covers in his attempt to "hide in plain sight" last fall.

The attempt failed. I won't steal the entire story from The Courier. Enter the heart of Tayside and Fife yourself. Read all about it here.