"Free Wi-Fi" Scam In the Wild 332
DeadlyBattleRobot writes in with a story from Computerworld about a rather simple scam that has been observed in the wild in several US airports. Bad guys set up a computer-to-computer (ad hoc) network and name it "Free Wi-Fi." You join it and, if you have file sharing enabled, your computer becomes a zombie. The perp has set up Internet sharing so you actually get the connectivity you expected, and you are none the wiser. Of course no one reading this would fall for such an elementary con. The article gives detailed instructions on how to make sure your computer doesn't connect automatically to any offered network, and how to tell if an access point is really an ad hoc network (it's harder on Vista).
Free is still free for me (Score:5, Funny)
Great! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:P. T. Barnum... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Washington Dulles too (Score:2, Funny)
Are you sure it's not you?
Re:Free is still free for me (Score:5, Funny)
The lesson: Don't f*ck with someone who has a four-digit userid on slashdot.
How would you tell? (Score:3, Funny)
Better yet... (Score:4, Funny)
Help other folks out. Set yourself up as a proxy, advertise yourself as "Free Wi-Fi" too, and let everyone else (at least, everyone who connects through you) safely use the scumbag's paid wi-fi connection for free.
But if you must have some innocent fun, you really should have your machine mirror images so that they're returned upside-down. Not all of them, just a very few that meet some criteria based on a hash of the user's MAC address or something. Imagine their confusion when their buddy's laptop shows the picture normally and they're sitting there thinking, "What the...!!?"
Re:Free is still free for me (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Free is still free for me (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Free is still free for me (Score:2, Funny)
Re:How would you tell? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Free is still free for me (Score:5, Funny)
Gimme your lunch money (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Free is still free for me (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Great! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Free is still free for me (Score:5, Funny)
{
FuckWith($user) = false;
}
There, now we can all agree!
Re:Free is still free for me (Score:5, Funny)
Out of a set of 2030 possible people, right?
Re:Free is still free for me (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Free is still free for me (Score:3, Funny)