Free Public Wireless

[Venkman]

So as a non-Blackberry user, and one unsuccessful in securring a broadband card for my laptop, I'm left to the good graces of folks with wifi routers, or the ignorant 

Almost everywhere I've been in the U.S. since getting my iPod Touch has had as one of the options "Free Public Wireless". This does not appear on my laptop's list of access points, but is almost always on the Touch. This some sort of propaganda campaign? Something linked to the guys that provide positioning from a non-GPS standpoint?

[Oban]

Honeypots.

[Trippy]

Have you installed NetStumbler on your laptop?

[Ookii]

A lot of times those are ad hoc networks and not infrastructure networks, if you have your laptop set to infrastructure networks only (always a good idea) you won't see them.

I worked for SBC for a bit and even though they merged with ATT the old SBC registration username/pass combinations work for ATT free hotspots.  Win!

[Righ]

I think you mean “Free Public WiFi” and oh boy, what a mess it is. These are ALL Windows XP and Windows Vista systems, running their wireless networks in ad-hoc mode, silently and without the knowledge of their users. What happened was that once upon a time, somebody connected to an ad-hoc network called “Free Public WiFi”. Later, when Windows is running in autoconf mode and fails to fins an infrastructure network, it looks for an ad-hoc network. Failing to find an adhoc network, it sets its SSID to the last ad-hoc network that it connected to and becomes the root node. Now there's two of them. You connect to one, leave and then go home. Later, when out of range of networks in your profile, your laptop becomes number 3. And so on. The rate of expansion is quite impressive, and there are thousands of such named ad-hoc networks now. Last I heard, there was no HotFix from MS on this. Don't use their lousy autoconf or don't connect to ad-hoc networks while using Windows.

So the answer is - ignorant user with a badly configured computer that is now using a viral SSID. Microsoft is creating the world's biggest botnet.

[Venkman]

Wow that sucks. That's like a viral expansion pattern right there. I certainly never using ad hoc from my laptop.

This was all from my iPod Touch, which I assume lists both infrastructure and ad hoc connections in the same list.

[Trippy]

I think you mean “Free Public WiFi” and oh boy, what a mess it is.

Huh, that's interesting.

[Righ]

Yes, the iPhone and iPod Touch list ad-hoc and infrastructure networks in the same list - crappy design. Although the wireless autoconf flaw has been around for a long long time, I credit the iPhone and Touch with exposing the spread of this flaw. Its fun and games because once you have connected, you can use a man-in-the-middle attack against the Windows box and exploit the flaws in their web browser to get the privilege escalation you need to take control of their machine. Requires some fun software to do it, but its trivial if you follow the instructions. Script kiddie easy.

To make your Windows box safe, you need to un-tick the "Automatically connect to non-preferred networks" check box and select the "Access point (infrastructure) networks only" radio button in the Advanced section of the wireless properties. Before it associates with an ad-hoc network. For fully disarmed, you want to disable WZC, which is easy enough to do in the services manager.

[Tale]

Almost everywhere I've been in the U.S. since getting my iPod Touch has had as one of the options "Free Public Wireless". This does not appear on my laptop's list of access points, but is almost always on the Touch. This some sort of propaganda campaign? Something linked to the guys that provide positioning from a non-GPS standpoint?

I didn't think it was any of the things people have said. I was thinking more like the mesh network movement (a popular movement to create free wireless Internet everywhere, by everyone sharing a bit of their internet connection and setting up a wireless repeater that forms part of the mass network).

Here's San Francisco's coverage: http://sf.meraki.com/overview and how you can join in http://sf.meraki.com/

Mark Pesce did an inspiring (long) presentation on it: http://www.webdirections.org/resources/mark-pesce/

Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=12590690161&ref=nf

Meraki repeaters used: http://meraki.com/oursolution/hardware/

[Samwise]

Holy shit that's awesome.  I'm definitely setting up one of their repeaters when I get a place in the city.

[Venkman]

tbh, I'm going with Righ's explanation because many places I see this are in airports, where the ratio between person and computer is almost 2:1 and they'd all rather charge you for wi-fi access than give it away for free

However, those repeaters are a great idea. I'd get one or five myself except the cost of entry is a bit high (outdoor repeaters at $200 a pop).

[Righ]

Advisory: http://www.nmrc.org/pub/advise/20060114.txt
Press: http://blogs.chron.com/techblog/archives/2006/09/free_public_wif.html

Mesh networks are unlikely to utilize cascaded ad-hoc networks. While it could be done, its inefficient and expensive.

[Tale]

I'd get one or five myself except the cost of entry is a bit high (outdoor repeaters at $200 a pop).

I understand the free mesh networkers are mostly using the $149 Minis, not the outdoor ones - like any wireless, it doesn't respect your walls. I can access at least five stupid people's unsecured networks from my apartment that I can use if my Internet dies :)

[climbjtree]

I just want to throw it out there that I recently bought an AT&T broadband aircard, and it f'ing sucks. Download speeds of no more than 6kbs and pages load agonizingly slow. I can barely mud with the speed it provides. Also, I'm not in BFE, so there is significant infrastructure available.

[Nerf]

You might be in an Edge coverage area and not G3, I get 700kbps+ on my phone with their broadband package, and when I need internet on a computer that isn't connected I just tether it.

[Dtrain]

I would advise against using your neighbor's unsecure networks. Usually they're all shitted up by god knows what's going on over there.

I'm extra protective of my network - I'd prefer to use WPA2 and mac address filtering, but I recently had to disable the mac address filter because it didn't play nice with vista. (Or rather vista is a steaming pile of doo - yeah, probably that.)

[Lantyssa]

Vista bungles MAC addresses?  That's hardware dependent!  Ye gods.