Sophos Cloud Optix
Many iPad and iPhone users lament the absence of proper wired connection options for their devices. No wired-speed LAN connectivity; no USB; no HDMI; no Firewire; no Thunderbolt.
But Chinese smugglers have rigged up their very own wired connectivity system for iDevices.
They used a crossbow, some bicycle parts, high-strength fishing wire and a narrow gap where the Hong Kong SAR and the People’s Republic of China proper (PRC) meet.
The wired cross-border connection wasn’t used to transmit data between the iDevices and other computers.
Instead, it was used to whizz the devices themselves across the border under cover of darkness, and – of course – without declaring them to Customs and Excise on either side of the border.
Sha Tua Kok, in the North East of Hong Kong, is still comparatively rural, at least compared with the other side of the frontier, where high-rise apartments crowd right up to the border.
According to reports, the smugglers shot a fishing wire from a high-rise apartment right at the very edge of Shenzhen to a low-rise house just across the stream marking the border.
They then rigged up a hand-operated pulley system to convey the smuggled goods across the 300m gap from the Hong Kong side.
Even though Hong Kong is technically part of PRC, the former British dependency’s status as a Special Administrative Region means that it retains its own legislature, judiciary, currency and, most importantly for smugglers, its own economy with its own system of taxation and excise. (Hong Kong drivers even keep to the left, not to the right as on the mainland.)
That can mean lucrative profits for those who don’t move their imports through official channels.
MICgadget has uploaded a news video in which the cops show off the smuggler’s iPhone connectivity kit and the cross-border path taken by the smuggled goods:
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Thanks Sophos, For yet another completely misleading headline. You are starting to go the way of FOX .
I think I'm done.
You're welcome.
Don't they have humour where you live?
Just lol.
The title was for comedy value, it caught my interest and the twist in the storey made me laugh, you sir need to grow a sense of humour.
@onlylogical: sounds to me you need to go back to watching Faux, since you and they gave no humor….(an yes, I meant to spell it that way)…Sophos, liked the article….
I saw the pic and immediately got the joke. Life is too serious to go without a sense of humor.
What do you expect from something called nakedsecurity? 101% "security is no laughing matter"? Come on … BTW, reminds me of the time when we tried to calculate the maximum attainable data transfer rate by throwing a 128k floppy out of the window.
You should read this paper: http://improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume11…
Written in 2005 by a group of Israeli computer scientists, it involves hooking a small balsa-wood trailer (with wheels made of data-packed DVDs) up to a Giant African snail, applying a "feed-forward" network bias to induce the snail to move (a piece of lettuce) and measuring the data rate.
They managed 37Mbit/sec, much faster than the ADSL speeds of the day (and faster than ADSL2+ even today).
Perfect stuff for the Annals of Improbable Research!
PS. In your experiments, were you allowed to adapt the aerodynamics of the floppy by wrapping it in another sort of network packet (e.g. a football), or not?
Yes, but wrapping them increased latency. We didn’t stop at transmitting single packets. It turned out that eventually the window size was the limiting factor. And of course it was asymmetric (“up” rates were much lower – on the other hand “down” suffered from packet-loss)
Apple does offer wired connectivity you just have to buy a rediculously priced cable, but compared to the cost of hotel pay TV the HDMI adaptor is a bargain:)
Anyways at least we know why Apple is so profitable!
"They used a crossbow, some bicycle parts, high-strength fishing wire and a narrow gap where the Hong Kong SAR and the People's Republic of China proper (PRC) meet."
This sounds very similar to some of the techniques I used to get my IBM mainframe to talk to my DEC PDP mini-computer in the 1970's. I'm glad to see new technology and old technology still come together.
Good fun!