As many of you know, I just returned from vacation. My first day back was kind of crappy, so let's just pretend that didn't happen. The second was pretty good though! I've had relatively few frustrations with technology, and I've managed to start getting back in the groove work-wise.
My summer vacation was relaxing, but it wasn't fun. I didn't really go anywhere, but I caught up on sleep (LOTS of sleep) and I didn't stress out about anything. I didn't even work on my hobby projects very much, and I didn't do more than talk about Imagination for an hour or so. I did go to new york to see my father, my family and some friends, but I got back here in time to avoid the RNC. That was what I did with my summer vacation and I ate hibachi and tenth was there too. The end.
Evil Epilogue:
Today I finally got software suspend to work on my linux laptop. So, of course, what does any good hacker do when he has done something like this? take it for a test drive!
What better way to test-drive this than to go warwalking through my neighborhood. I was lucky enough to find not just an open access point - not just a high-bandwidth connection - but a linksys device with the password still set to the default and adminnable through wifi! The connection appeared to be idle, so I helped myself to a heaping helping of bittorrent ports and began to make merry in the park at midnight.
So now I'm writing some specs, playing some nethack, blogging, downloading, and generally having a good time in the park at midnight. Some late-night joggers have given me some really weird looks.
The best part of this is that I am actually looking at the message "Hello glyph, the elven Wizard, welcome back to NetHack! You are lucky! Full moon tonight." while there is actually a visible full moon directly in front of me.
And I'm thinking... wouldn't it be cool if I had a backpack full of solar-powered computers with wifi cards and repeaters that I could just sprinkle around the country... building a redundant, distributed filesharing overlay network on accidental connections... are there any such devices available for the average consumer-level evil genius?
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4 comments:
I think open admin/admin linksys routers must be universal. At Itamar's we used his wireless, but in both San Francisco and New York, there was one within range of where we're sleeping. It could be that they span the entire continental US, open routers hand-in-hand.
Solar's easy. There's a lot of places that sell things like this: http://www.ctsolar.com/Backpacking%20Solar%20Panels.htm
Cloaking devices to keep people from swiping the gear are harder to come by. Got a line on those? I could use a few myself.
It looks like the AP I was using is still there, but is somehow closed to the world. It's got no encryption... but when I went back to the park, I connected and couldn't get a DHCP lease with my essid set to it.
Several other open access points were in range, two which were notable: they were linksys APs which appeared to be connected to nothing - I could connect through the wireless, acquire a DHCP lease, and even configure the router/access point with the default password, but not access the internet. I could even look up hosts. But I could not access hosts on the internet. Does anyone know of a tool that would make a honeypot that convincingly looks like a linksys access point?
I hope you're happy with yourself :p
Anyway. Your powerbook or pretty much anything with an airport card---possibly even with a wifi card---can act as a weak hub to extend a network's range. Or, you can just get a crapload of the Air Port Expresses and rig up their power supply to come from a battery-packed (in case of overcast) solar cell construct and place them on such things as telephone poles for 150ft around it. I wonder if there would be a way to boost its signal to 250 - 500 ft...or just place one on every 3rd or 4th pole in a radius. hmm.. :)
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