Doctor Who-Style Wi-Fi With Sentient Captive Portal

blog.tonybox.net

90 points·bonyt··5 comments

> OSX tries to automatically detect if there is a captive portal login screen, like those commonly used by coffee shops and such, and open up a web page to allow the user to log in, we’re taking advantage of that by instead loading a web page which will upload the user’s soul.

iOS does this as well. It's an absolutely terrifying thought when coupled with one of the old safari-based jailbreaks. Thankfully, it can be turned off in the settings.

The internet is a scary place.

Windows 8 doesn't do it automatically, but does prompt with a "do you want to be taken to the login page" which most people would click I should imagine. Blackberry also prompts through a pop-up to load that page.

As does Android.

Windows 7 refuses to show the UTF-8 characters or show the login page automatically. I suppose that explains the lack of Windows UIs in the episode. It also suggests that unlike OS X users, Windows users are immune from alien Wi-Fi attacks...

Ubuntu 12.10 does show the UTF-8 AP name correctly but does not open login pages automatically.

> Windows users are immune from alien Wi-Fi attacks

It wasn’t really alien, just an alien customer with a London-based HaaS contractor – and with regards to Windows users being immune, don’t some bots also patch the security holes through which they got into their host?

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