The State of Free WiFi
on 07.16.07, 06:35am in embedded, mac, wireless • share on facebook • comments (2)
Thanks to the iPhone, I’ve basically been turning in a walking wifi hotspot locator.
The nice thing that I’ve been discovering is the amazing amount of free internet access points out there – every time I go to check mail or jump on the web, some new wireless node is showing up. Who knew that Bellevue Square mall had free wifi? or that when at the light by Husky stadium, you could get on the University of Washington’s Wifi. Just amazing.
One thing that’s been particularly interesting to me is how many people just leave their wireless routers named “Linksys” or “Belkin”. Perhaps I’m overly paranoid, but I usual name my access point something bizarre, shut off ‘announcement’ of the SSID and lock it down to specific mac addresses.
JohnNull (July 16, 2007 @ 9:21 am)
If you still have a PocketPC hanging around you should try Wififofum.
http://www.aspecto-software.com/rw/applications/wififofum/
You can use it with a GPS to log open access points as you walk or drive around. That data can be exported to Google Earth / others. Just between downtown Redmond and Crossroads Mall I logged over 60 open access points.
Daniel Marsh (July 16, 2007 @ 7:29 pm)
Turning off beaconing and doing mac filtering is not sufficient security. Programs like kismet will reveal the presence of non-beaconing networks if there is any data sent as well and will also reveal mac addresses of connected clients, as well. Spoofing a mac address is trivial. You really should have something like WPA turned on as well. WEP has been no protection against intruders for quite some time. Aircrack-ptw, used properly can break most WEP implementations in 1-2 minutes.