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AT&T Accidentally Provides Free Wi-Fi To All
SecureThroughObscure writes tells us about a hack broken by MacOSRumors: you can get free Wi-Fi at Starbucks, Barnes & Noble, and other AT&T hotspots if you know how to set your browser's user agent string (trivial on Safari), and know a valid iPhone phone number. ZDNet blogger Nate McFeters gives some more details and links. This can't last.
Even if every /.'er did this, it still would be a drop in a bucket compared to the number of folks who happily pay the fee.
For example, many pay wifi points can be circumvented just by connecting to a VPN over UDP (since they're only filtering TCP requests). I doubt they're going broke due to that issue though..
A surefire way to ensure that this hack lasts as long as possible is to keep it super-secret and not let AT&T know they screwed up.
But I'm sure posting the story to slashdot is fine. Nobody reads this site, after all...
Maybe it's just me, but am I the only one who's sitting here thinking that using this hack is tantamount to stealing service? Hacks for stealing cable service have existed for decades now, and were very much illegal. And why shouldn't they be? Not everything has to be hacker proof. Sometimes it's just about putting a lock on the door and saying, "This doesn't belong to you."
To use a typical Slashdot analogy, the lock on my front door is pretty flimsy and could probably be picked or forced without much effort. Is that an invitation to walk into my house and use my computer?
This also differs from open WiFi points in that open WiFi points have no security. It's difficult for a passerby to tell the difference between an intentionally shared access point and an access point that has accidentally been misconfigured.
Which reminds me, WiFi security is not all that hard to crack. Does that give people a free license to crack their neighbor's WiFi and begin using it without permission?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade