Getting free wireless in airports and hotels | Hacker News Reader

Getting free wireless in airports and hotels

blog.makezine.com

22 pointsmcxx13 comments

This sounds like stealing to me. DNS/ICMP tunneling is a clever hack, but the end result is that you are using someone else's bandwidth without paying for it.

Sounds like making use of the generous DNS and ICMP features they're providing for free to me.

"Stealing" is an overstatement for stuff like this. In the grand scheme of things it's like taking a penny from the penny tray, like plugging your computer in for power at a tech conference, like "testing" a few grapes in the grocery store, or like picking a pretty flower from a hedgerow.

Sounds to me like we're all getting crappy fucking DNS gateway software installed on our upstream connections. Thanks!

I love security. An Apple II and two feet of floppies with an old game cracker's tools were my introduction to home computing. When I was younger I had a few adventures. So I hear where you're coming from.

But this juvenile attitude of "they haven't figured out how to stop me so it must be ok" drives me nuts. Have a little integrity. Maybe it's a small thing but that doesn't make it nothing.

It's not even really that. Unless you're really abusing that bandwidth, it was probably sitting unused anyway and would have served zero purpose if you had not used it.

So it's more like taking a picture of a pretty flower in front of a sign that says "don't take pictures of our flowers".

The pennies in the tray are explicitly put there for you to take one. The DNS server is not there for you to avoid paying for the internet service you're using.

It's a small thing, and I don't personally think it's a big deal to steal wifi, but the idea that because something is easy to steal means it's not theft is ridiculous.

As a tort, doesn't theft require that you're taking someone else's property and depriving that person of its use?

Using someone's bandwidth surreptitiously isn't really "theft" as much as it's virtual trespassing. Just because you're checking your mail doesn't stop someone else still using the connection (or even blocking you with a single click).

the idea that because something is easy to steal means it's not theft is ridiculous.

I'd agree with that, but I don't think it's "theft" (so my counter examples were poor, I'd admit ;-)). It's more like someone jumping in your swimming pool without permission, rather than actually stealing the water.

Anyone know how this compares to the instructions at dnstunnel.de, which uses ozymandns perl scripts? I've been using this method, and though it works, it is horrendously slow (takes a minute or more to load gmail...)

Once I've been using free wireless in the JFK airport. But my laptop ran out of the power. I found power socket in the floor near the phone booth, and plugged in my laptop. After some time security guy came and told me that I shouldn't do that. So when I was passing to the plain, they looked through all stuff from my luggage. Then they apologized "for the mess"

I've never had issues plugging in at JFK (or ROC - the two airports I fly between). A security guard has politely asked me to move before, but that usually happens when I start hogging the outlet for > an hour (layovers, wait before flight if its a long flight, etc). And I can understand wanting to keep the outlets free incase someone else needs to use it; usable outlets are sparsely spread out at airports.

Be wary of ad-hoc networks in airports. Ever time I've fired up a wireless device in an airport I've seen a "Free Wifi" ad-hoc network which was almost certainly some dude with a laptop trying to steal peoples data.

or it could be due to a very strange windows xp bug. here's the best explanation i could find, after not much googling:

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-us-co/2008-February...

It's pretty straightforward; WinXP just remembers and rebroadcasts ad-hoc SSIDs, so once you connect to "Free Public Wi-Fi", you're "infected". It is indeed pretty hilarious.

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