9 ms·

Smuggling USB Sticks

219 points by edent 14y ago

dexter313 14y ago
It takes about 2,89 days on a 1 Mbit connection to download 32 GBytes.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- 4ad 14y ago
  It's about upload, not download. Download in Iran is usually restricted to 128kbps, upload probably is significantly less. Also, you completely missed the point of the article.
  - pyre 14y ago
    Getting information into Iran is probably just as important as getting information out though. While the specific example would be about upload speed from Iran, the over-arching issue is about upload and download speed.
eknkc 14y ago
I'm currently uploading my iPhoto backup to Amazon S3. It will take 2 more days. Would be glad to have an option to mail the files in a card or something like that.
- cbr 14y ago
  http://aws.amazon.com/importexport/ http://aws.amazon.com/importexport/
- objclxt 14y ago
  You can - http://aws.amazon.com/importexport/ http://aws.amazon.com/importexport/ Well, not a SD card, but you can mail Amazon a HD and they'll transfer it over for you. It may not suit your particular use case, but people do use it.
  - eknkc 14y ago
    Yes I've seen that but I belive it's more suitable for high volume data, say, tens of terabytes or more. As the prices are high for something like my personal backup.
tomerv 14y ago
Also known as "Sneakernet" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet)
- bigiain 14y ago
  And the old "never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of backup tapes" (and the modern version of that calculation, a station wagon fill of microsd cards, is calculated at 500gig per second here: http://www.dansdata.com/gz105.htm http://www.dansdata.com/gz105.htm )
- craigmoore 14y ago
  Love that term, "Sneakernet". Would love to see an analysis of a modern day sneakernet. This article just seems to remind us that it is possible.
zokier 14y ago
32 gigabytes for 20 "high definition" movies? That's 1.6GB per movie. Seems awfully low, compared to eg Blu-Ray. Afaik movies on blurays are in the 20GB range, ie. an order of magnitude larger than the presented 1.6GB. Even movies downscaled to 720p are usually sized to fit a DVD5, 4.3 GB, still much larger than 1.6GB. Point being that movie files are still quite huge. Also, transferring 32GB over fairly modest 10Mbps line takes roughly 7 hours, far less time than what it'd take via post service.
- dexter313 14y ago
  I don't that cubans have many 10Mbps connections.
- icebraining 14y ago
  Due to the asymmetric nature of most end-user lines, 10Mbps of upload bandwidth seem far from modest. Around here you'd need a 100mbps (download) line, which is available but pricey, and as far as I know they're not even available in most of the world. If you're talking about countries where this censorship is common, even a 10/1 line is probably not affordable by anyone except an elite.
  - edent 14y ago
    Very true. I'm on "Superfast" broadband in the UK. That means 16Mbps down, 1.3Mbps up. The only way to get 10Mbps up is to be on fibre-to-the-premises. And even then only if you live in one of the blessed areas.
    - elemeno 14y ago
      ADSL supports up to 24Mbps down in the UK - assuming that you're (very) close to the exchange. I could theoretically get that with my old ISP, were I not 1.6km from the exchange. Cable supports up to 100Mbs down (at least I'm pretty sure that Virgin has started to roll that out, if not then 50Mbs), though contention might be an issue at peak times. I've got BT Infinity, which is fibre to the cabinet rather than all the way to the home. Since the distance to the cabinet is likely to be pretty minimal you can get pretty high bandwidth over the last length of telephone wire. For reference, I get 76Mbs down and 20+Mbs up - more than fast enough for plently of thing to feel instant, such as downloading movies which now takes in the order of minutes.
objclxt 14y ago
I used to work in a Middle Eastern country that fairly aggressively filtered the net and where officially most DVDs, games, and books were banned. Of course, unofficially you just had to pop down to the souks where you could get anything (pornography included) burnt to DVD. I used my time there as an excuse to digitise my DVD collection, since they certainly weren't going to let me get away with bringing them into the country, whereas a USD hard-drive went pretty much un-noticed. It seems to me that whilst there are a few countries which enforce a totalitarian approach to censorship (like North Korea), others really just do it for 'appearances', because to not do so would be culturally unacceptable. Certainly pretty much everyone I met was circumventing censorship (both in net and print).
- EliRivers 14y ago
  This is by design; when you set up a situation where everyone is a criminal, any time you decide you want to haul someone in or stick someone in jail, you'll have no trouble finding something they're guilty of.
  - seanmcdirmid 14y ago
    Everyone is guilty of something is pretty much how China works, they even have contradicting laws on the book to ensure this. A related interesting effect with respect to corruption: any official is corrupt, and can be brought down at anytime because of that. Squeaky clean officials are not trusted because the "nuclear option" won't work on them, so they aren't promoted, leading to a downward spiral in quality. A reasonable fair legal system is very important, I feel like we take it for granted in the west that things could be much worse.
    - nandemo 14y ago
      Here's a Brazilian comedy sketch that portrays that exact scenario: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFd5_YtbScs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFd5_YtbScs (not-so-good English subtitles available)
    - chimeracoder 14y ago
scrrr 14y ago
The article the author points to on Cuba is very good. I have been to Cuba and I find it quite accurate. Indeed, the news also spread via USB stick. If you ever go to Cuba why not bring some data. Be it music, video or pages of the Spanish Wikipedia..
- chimeracoder 14y ago
  > If you ever go to Cuba why not bring some data. Be it music, video or pages of the Spanish Wikipedia.. I'd certainly hope that they already have a copy of that, given that an entire dump is <32 GB[1], depending on how much meta-info (edit history, etc.) you want to include. From there, all you have to do is smuggle in the diffs every now and then, which should be minuscule. [1]http://dumps.wikimedia.org/eswiki/20110911/ http://dumps.wikimedia.org/eswiki/20110911/
DanBC 14y ago
It'd be great to think that things like Usenet, FIDOnet or similar are still being used with people sneakernetting USBsticks around.
gbog 14y ago
Another bucket of fuel to my pool of reasons to think the "Cloud" is misguided. Last time in a Pycon conference in Beijing, 5/4 speeches were about new cloud offers (it was advertising actually). This makes no sense. People should not do their stuff in free apps running on devices they don't really own, and these apps should not store that stuff in a cloud vaguely rented by the app maker. Instead, people should use open tools, running on devices they own, storing things on some storage they own and control. On my bed, I can use my tablet to browse pics I have taken with my phone, while listening to music I have ripped on my desktop long time ago. It seems necessary to be able to do so, but it is not necessary to hand over all your stuff to Apple or Google or Dropbox to do so. (And all your things should be right there even if you ISP is down.) The obvious solution I used is a "local cloud" (just a samba server on a little Raspberry Pi actually). But on Android strangely only very few media players on devices acknowledge this need and let my slide pics, listen to music or watch video from the LAN. (I have no idea on iOS, I suppose it is even worse, do they have VLC on iOS?) edit: clarify
- uptown 14y ago
  VLC was available on the App Store for a very limited time. It was pulled over licensing issues: http://obamapacman.com/2011/01/vicious-nokia-employee-gets-vlc-removed-from-apple-app-store/ http://obamapacman.com/2011/01/vicious-nokia-employee-gets-v...
  - crististm 14y ago
    This makes it even more important that people should not trust Trojan horses in the form of "clouds". I happen to agree with the EFF position on this.
  - rmc 14y ago
    Wow that's a biased and skewed article. The truth is Apple do not allow GPLed software on the App Store, and hence do not allow easy install of GPL software on iOS (iPad & iPhone). Microsoft are fine with people installing GPL software on MS Windows OSs. The problem is Apple's strict rules about licencing and software installation, not a "vicious Nokia employee who just doing it because Apple & Nokia are compeditors". I assure you, there are many Free Software/Open Source developers who are ethically and morally opposed to the App Store idea.
keithpeter 14y ago
http://deaddrops.com/ http://deaddrops.com/ Internet without cables? Dead drops started as an art experiment...
ianlevesque 14y ago
> I don't know what will happen to the Internet. SOPA, DEA, and HADOPI all conspire to break the way we share knowledge - under the benign guise of copyright protection. And yet all it takes is a dozen USB sticks, a few memory cards, and very little effort to break their embargo. For the technically savvy, yes. But by enacting these changes, governments and other interests can dramatically alter the mainstream discourse and culture negatively. Having a difficult technical means for a few to work around the damage won't prevent the overall harm.
stcredzero 14y ago
How about an update of Fidonet where people just have to take laptops into internet cafés, such that laptops pass such data to each other with no intervention from users? This wouldn't replace the USB Sticks, rather it would supplement the distribution. (For WPA protected networks, there may have to be some mediation to establish the first connection.)
bitwize 14y ago
When I saw Johnny Mnemonic again recently, I thought to myself that he could probably get more done -- at less personal risk -- by swallowing condoms full of micro-SD cards.
- electromagnetic 14y ago
  Agreed, but I believe the original purpose is that if he's killed the data is rendered useless. For organized crime, killing you to get micro-SD cards out of your gut is probably preferable to waiting for you to pass them. I think there's only one real reference to this in the movie. It's supposed to be a super-secure way to transfer data. However, personally if the data was that important I'd just say "you come to me", because honestly if I got the cash I wouldn't care if you got shot 5 feet outside my building.
  - chimeracoder 14y ago
    > For organized crime, killing you to get micro-SD cards out of your gut is probably preferable to waiting for you to pass them. Not if they're encrypted well enough and the data is somewhat time-sensitive! ....have we just found the solution to this XKCD? http://xkcd.com/538/ http://xkcd.com/538/
    - electromagnetic 14y ago
      Pertaining to the XKCD you just have to hope they don't get wise and go with vivisection. However, the sender would likely phone/email/deliver the password on notification of arrival, which IIRC was what was supposed to happen in Johnny Mnemonic, but the Yakuza attacked and Johnny gets a portion of the password, which incidentally ties in with frame 2 of that comic. I guess the lesson here is that a $5 wrench and a $50 mix of acid/shrooms/K applied to the right person would beat any cyrpto known to man.
      - ctdonath 14y ago
        Aka "rubber hose cryptanalysis".
chiph 14y ago
You can hide the micro-SD cards inside some of the coins sold by spy-coins.com (they're also sold by ThinkGeek). Only downside I've noticed is that when you drop one of the coins onto a hard surface it doesn't sound right - the "ring" it makes is different. But if you have it in with a handful of legit coins, it passes without notice. Just don't spend it by accident. ;)
dahlia1 14y ago
I smell something rotten. Hide a microSD in a cake? If security and customs missed a cake going thru you think they would manage finding it stuck in your shoe?
- philip1209 14y ago
  You could tape a micro-SD card to the bottom of your foot, under your sock, and the TSA would never find it. Just opt for the pat-down, and they have never checked the bottom of my feet before.
jmmcd 14y ago
Bad title! The only smuggling is of an SD card. The USB sticks in Cuba are "passed around", not smuggled. (Everyone's being pedantic about the numbers, so I felt entitled to be pedantic about something else.)
Aissen 14y ago
As usual, relevant xkcd: http://xkcd.com/691/ http://xkcd.com/691/
greenyoda 14y ago
Smuggled USB sticks are the 21st Century version of samizdat.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samizdat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samizdat

219 points by edent 14y ago

dexter313 14y ago

It takes about 2,89 days on a 1 Mbit connection to download 32 GBytes.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
4ad 14y ago
It's about upload, not download. Download in Iran is usually restricted to 128kbps, upload probably is significantly less. Also, you completely missed the point of the article.
- pyre 14y ago
  Getting information into Iran is probably just as important as getting information out though. While the specific example would be about upload speed from Iran, the over-arching issue is about upload and download speed.

eknkc 14y ago

I'm currently uploading my iPhoto backup to Amazon S3. It will take 2 more days. Would be glad to have an option to mail the files in a card or something like that.

cbr 14y ago
http://aws.amazon.com/importexport/ http://aws.amazon.com/importexport/
objclxt 14y ago
You can - http://aws.amazon.com/importexport/ http://aws.amazon.com/importexport/ Well, not a SD card, but you can mail Amazon a HD and they'll transfer it over for you. It may not suit your particular use case, but people do use it.
- eknkc 14y ago
  Yes I've seen that but I belive it's more suitable for high volume data, say, tens of terabytes or more. As the prices are high for something like my personal backup.

tomerv 14y ago

Also known as "Sneakernet" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet)

bigiain 14y ago
And the old "never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of backup tapes" (and the modern version of that calculation, a station wagon fill of microsd cards, is calculated at 500gig per second here: http://www.dansdata.com/gz105.htm http://www.dansdata.com/gz105.htm )
craigmoore 14y ago
Love that term, "Sneakernet". Would love to see an analysis of a modern day sneakernet. This article just seems to remind us that it is possible.

zokier 14y ago

32 gigabytes for 20 "high definition" movies? That's 1.6GB per movie. Seems awfully low, compared to eg Blu-Ray. Afaik movies on blurays are in the 20GB range, ie. an order of magnitude larger than the presented 1.6GB. Even movies downscaled to 720p are usually sized to fit a DVD5, 4.3 GB, still much larger than 1.6GB. Point being that movie files are still quite huge. Also, transferring 32GB over fairly modest 10Mbps line takes roughly 7 hours, far less time than what it'd take via post service.

dexter313 14y ago
I don't that cubans have many 10Mbps connections.
icebraining 14y ago
Due to the asymmetric nature of most end-user lines, 10Mbps of upload bandwidth seem far from modest. Around here you'd need a 100mbps (download) line, which is available but pricey, and as far as I know they're not even available in most of the world. If you're talking about countries where this censorship is common, even a 10/1 line is probably not affordable by anyone except an elite.
- edent 14y ago
  Very true. I'm on "Superfast" broadband in the UK. That means 16Mbps down, 1.3Mbps up. The only way to get 10Mbps up is to be on fibre-to-the-premises. And even then only if you live in one of the blessed areas.
  - elemeno 14y ago
    ADSL supports up to 24Mbps down in the UK - assuming that you're (very) close to the exchange. I could theoretically get that with my old ISP, were I not 1.6km from the exchange. Cable supports up to 100Mbs down (at least I'm pretty sure that Virgin has started to roll that out, if not then 50Mbs), though contention might be an issue at peak times. I've got BT Infinity, which is fibre to the cabinet rather than all the way to the home. Since the distance to the cabinet is likely to be pretty minimal you can get pretty high bandwidth over the last length of telephone wire. For reference, I get 76Mbs down and 20+Mbs up - more than fast enough for plently of thing to feel instant, such as downloading movies which now takes in the order of minutes.

objclxt 14y ago

I used to work in a Middle Eastern country that fairly aggressively filtered the net and where officially most DVDs, games, and books were banned. Of course, unofficially you just had to pop down to the souks where you could get anything (pornography included) burnt to DVD. I used my time there as an excuse to digitise my DVD collection, since they certainly weren't going to let me get away with bringing them into the country, whereas a USD hard-drive went pretty much un-noticed. It seems to me that whilst there are a few countries which enforce a totalitarian approach to censorship (like North Korea), others really just do it for 'appearances', because to not do so would be culturally unacceptable. Certainly pretty much everyone I met was circumventing censorship (both in net and print).

EliRivers 14y ago
This is by design; when you set up a situation where everyone is a criminal, any time you decide you want to haul someone in or stick someone in jail, you'll have no trouble finding something they're guilty of.
- seanmcdirmid 14y ago
  Everyone is guilty of something is pretty much how China works, they even have contradicting laws on the book to ensure this. A related interesting effect with respect to corruption: any official is corrupt, and can be brought down at anytime because of that. Squeaky clean officials are not trusted because the "nuclear option" won't work on them, so they aren't promoted, leading to a downward spiral in quality. A reasonable fair legal system is very important, I feel like we take it for granted in the west that things could be much worse.
  - nandemo 14y ago
    Here's a Brazilian comedy sketch that portrays that exact scenario: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFd5_YtbScs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFd5_YtbScs (not-so-good English subtitles available)
  - chimeracoder 14y ago

scrrr 14y ago

The article the author points to on Cuba is very good. I have been to Cuba and I find it quite accurate. Indeed, the news also spread via USB stick. If you ever go to Cuba why not bring some data. Be it music, video or pages of the Spanish Wikipedia..

chimeracoder 14y ago
> If you ever go to Cuba why not bring some data. Be it music, video or pages of the Spanish Wikipedia.. I'd certainly hope that they already have a copy of that, given that an entire dump is <32 GB[1], depending on how much meta-info (edit history, etc.) you want to include. From there, all you have to do is smuggle in the diffs every now and then, which should be minuscule. [1]http://dumps.wikimedia.org/eswiki/20110911/ http://dumps.wikimedia.org/eswiki/20110911/

DanBC 14y ago

It'd be great to think that things like Usenet, FIDOnet or similar are still being used with people sneakernetting USBsticks around.

gbog 14y ago

Another bucket of fuel to my pool of reasons to think the "Cloud" is misguided. Last time in a Pycon conference in Beijing, 5/4 speeches were about new cloud offers (it was advertising actually). This makes no sense. People should not do their stuff in free apps running on devices they don't really own, and these apps should not store that stuff in a cloud vaguely rented by the app maker. Instead, people should use open tools, running on devices they own, storing things on some storage they own and control. On my bed, I can use my tablet to browse pics I have taken with my phone, while listening to music I have ripped on my desktop long time ago. It seems necessary to be able to do so, but it is not necessary to hand over all your stuff to Apple or Google or Dropbox to do so. (And all your things should be right there even if you ISP is down.) The obvious solution I used is a "local cloud" (just a samba server on a little Raspberry Pi actually). But on Android strangely only very few media players on devices acknowledge this need and let my slide pics, listen to music or watch video from the LAN. (I have no idea on iOS, I suppose it is even worse, do they have VLC on iOS?) edit: clarify

uptown 14y ago
VLC was available on the App Store for a very limited time. It was pulled over licensing issues: http://obamapacman.com/2011/01/vicious-nokia-employee-gets-vlc-removed-from-apple-app-store/ http://obamapacman.com/2011/01/vicious-nokia-employee-gets-v...
- crististm 14y ago
  This makes it even more important that people should not trust Trojan horses in the form of "clouds". I happen to agree with the EFF position on this.
- rmc 14y ago
  Wow that's a biased and skewed article. The truth is Apple do not allow GPLed software on the App Store, and hence do not allow easy install of GPL software on iOS (iPad & iPhone). Microsoft are fine with people installing GPL software on MS Windows OSs. The problem is Apple's strict rules about licencing and software installation, not a "vicious Nokia employee who just doing it because Apple & Nokia are compeditors". I assure you, there are many Free Software/Open Source developers who are ethically and morally opposed to the App Store idea.

keithpeter 14y ago

http://deaddrops.com/ http://deaddrops.com/ Internet without cables? Dead drops started as an art experiment...

ianlevesque 14y ago

> I don't know what will happen to the Internet. SOPA, DEA, and HADOPI all conspire to break the way we share knowledge - under the benign guise of copyright protection. And yet all it takes is a dozen USB sticks, a few memory cards, and very little effort to break their embargo. For the technically savvy, yes. But by enacting these changes, governments and other interests can dramatically alter the mainstream discourse and culture negatively. Having a difficult technical means for a few to work around the damage won't prevent the overall harm.

stcredzero 14y ago

How about an update of Fidonet where people just have to take laptops into internet cafés, such that laptops pass such data to each other with no intervention from users? This wouldn't replace the USB Sticks, rather it would supplement the distribution. (For WPA protected networks, there may have to be some mediation to establish the first connection.)

bitwize 14y ago

When I saw Johnny Mnemonic again recently, I thought to myself that he could probably get more done -- at less personal risk -- by swallowing condoms full of micro-SD cards.

electromagnetic 14y ago
Agreed, but I believe the original purpose is that if he's killed the data is rendered useless. For organized crime, killing you to get micro-SD cards out of your gut is probably preferable to waiting for you to pass them. I think there's only one real reference to this in the movie. It's supposed to be a super-secure way to transfer data. However, personally if the data was that important I'd just say "you come to me", because honestly if I got the cash I wouldn't care if you got shot 5 feet outside my building.
- chimeracoder 14y ago
  > For organized crime, killing you to get micro-SD cards out of your gut is probably preferable to waiting for you to pass them. Not if they're encrypted well enough and the data is somewhat time-sensitive! ....have we just found the solution to this XKCD? http://xkcd.com/538/ http://xkcd.com/538/
  - electromagnetic 14y ago
    Pertaining to the XKCD you just have to hope they don't get wise and go with vivisection. However, the sender would likely phone/email/deliver the password on notification of arrival, which IIRC was what was supposed to happen in Johnny Mnemonic, but the Yakuza attacked and Johnny gets a portion of the password, which incidentally ties in with frame 2 of that comic. I guess the lesson here is that a $5 wrench and a $50 mix of acid/shrooms/K applied to the right person would beat any cyrpto known to man.
    - ctdonath 14y ago
      Aka "rubber hose cryptanalysis".

chiph 14y ago

You can hide the micro-SD cards inside some of the coins sold by spy-coins.com (they're also sold by ThinkGeek). Only downside I've noticed is that when you drop one of the coins onto a hard surface it doesn't sound right - the "ring" it makes is different. But if you have it in with a handful of legit coins, it passes without notice. Just don't spend it by accident. ;)

dahlia1 14y ago

I smell something rotten. Hide a microSD in a cake? If security and customs missed a cake going thru you think they would manage finding it stuck in your shoe?

philip1209 14y ago
You could tape a micro-SD card to the bottom of your foot, under your sock, and the TSA would never find it. Just opt for the pat-down, and they have never checked the bottom of my feet before.

jmmcd 14y ago

Bad title! The only smuggling is of an SD card. The USB sticks in Cuba are "passed around", not smuggled. (Everyone's being pedantic about the numbers, so I felt entitled to be pedantic about something else.)

Aissen 14y ago

As usual, relevant xkcd: http://xkcd.com/691/ http://xkcd.com/691/

greenyoda 14y ago

Smuggled USB sticks are the 21st Century version of samizdat.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samizdat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samizdat