The name of this band is... In a typeface too small to be made out.

[hirez]

There really should be a government health warning on wifi kit.

Quite.

Stats from this AM's half asleep warcommute:

APs: 19
Open: 10
Default SSID: 3

Bear in mind I take 15-20 minutes (when UWE & school are on hols) to cross bits of Bristol that roll the pavements up at half-six in the evening.

Now I'd best have a crack at getting gpsd working under late-model FreeBSD. I can cu and tip to that port and the NMEA data comes flooding out in the Tetley style, but the program itself just doesn't want to play. I'll make a guess at a random permissions/devfs interaction.

Comments

[reddragdiva]

Bwahahaha. I shall link this from here.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_wires/]

...and the NMEA data comes flooding out in the Tetley style...

Tetley tea, or Tetley bitter?

[aoakley.livejournal.com]

I've said this before (http://groups.google.co.uk/group/uk.comp.home-networking/msg/58778c9315e406a4), and I'll no doubt keep saying it until I'm blue in the face...

We should stop thinking that an open network is open because the owners are too stupid to protect themselves. In all likelyhood it is open because the owners are kind-hearted, neighbourly and generous. I would like to commend so many people for being so community-spirited and I would hope that my neighbours would think the same of me. There is absolutely nothing inherently risky about an open network, it is quite possible to have an open network where all the clients are secured by use of a firewall or encrypted VPN, for instance (as mine is). Windows XP SP2 now ships with the software firewall switched on by default (http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,114593,00.asp) and all ports in stealth mode.

I have an orchard with 9 fruit trees but there are only 2 people in my household. There is NO WAY we could find a use for all those apples and plums. If I choose to leave the gates to my orchard open, then that is because I *EXPECT* my neighbours and passers-by to help themselves, not because I forgot to shut the gate. It is this stupid townie mentality that causes problems to farmers; if a farmer has left a gate open then that is because he WANTS it open (http://www.countrysideaccess.gov.uk/countryside_code/point_2.php), you don't shut a gate that has been left open, it is open for a reason; for instance, you might isolate the herd grazing in one field from its water in another field, or he might be trying to encourage ramblers to visit his farm shop.

With the advent of sub-£20-a-month 2-meg broadband, bandwidth is no longer a scarce commodity. It shouldn't surprise anyone that people choose to give it away, or at least that people aren't concerned about it.

Finding an default-set open network whilst wardriving is no cause for alarm. What would be a cause for alarm would be finding a machine connected to such an open network that was not protected by a firewall and had unsecured exposed services.

Once firewalled and exposed services secured, the only remaining risk is privacy; for instance, it would be trivial to log all websites visited by a client on an open network. Since I don't visit illegal sites nor financial sites whilst using my open WiFi, this is not a concern for me, and I doubt it is of any serious risk to the average punter either.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Indeed. Though you might want to watch where you wave that 'townie' epithet; it's irritating.

You'll note that I log these sans comment. (and indeed absent (B)SSID, MAC and location) I'm not short bandwidth either at home or work, and it'll be a strange day when I have to park up in some Stapleton back-street because I can't wait any longer to post to LJ.

The thing is, It's interesting that this tech is everywhere. (and that I'm cheerfully behind the curve with my 10Mb/s wired network of scavenged machines. Hell, even the box with the bleeding-edge BSD version is a PII350 that was going to be chucked in the skip. I'm also aware that wardriving is so five years ago. But, one learns best by doing and hacking on the code oneself, so here I am. Driving down the street. I get the funniest looks from. Everyone I meet.) It's not interesting to poke around in some random person's shared drive to see what sort of pr0n they like best.

I mean, I'll probably end up having a play with dwepcrack, but on something I've set up myself.