On Sat, 03 Feb 2007 12:04:06 -0800, Jeff Liebermann
<jeffl@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us> wrote:
: "Ablang" <ron916@gmail.com> hath wroth:
:
: >First, let's take a look at how the attack works. You go to an airport
: >or other hot spot and fire up your PC, hoping to find a free hot spot.
: >You see one that calls itself "Free Wi-Fi" or a similar name. You
: >connect. Bingo -- you've been had!
:
: Chuckle. Why do I have problems visualizing some hacker, sitting in
: an airport lobby, waiting for unsuspecting wireless users to login or
: whatever? That's about the most non-productive waste of time and
: effort I could imagine. Perhaps if he were to occupy his time
: stealing the laptop, it might be worth the effort.
:
: >The problem is that it's not really a hot spot. Instead, it's an ad
: >hoc, peer-to-peer network, possibly set up as a trap by someone with a
: >laptop nearby.
:
: It's not a man in the middle attack. It's a lame Microsoft bug (which
: still hasn't been fixed). See:
: <http://blogs.chron.com/techblog/archives/2006/09/free_public_wif.html>
: <http://www.nmrc.org/pub/advise/20060114.txt>
: I've seen the "free public WiFi" SSID appear dozens of times at Fry's
: and Circuit City, as their demo machines seems to be rather common
: victims. It had me confused for a while until I read the explanation.

Me too. I've been seeing it on the commuter train I ride to work. It persists
too long to be from a stationary site, so I had concluded that it's broadcast
from a laptop on the train. That was counterintuitive, of course, since a
potential victim would be unlikely to fall for a ploy that was so obviously
absurd. But I guess the laptop on the train must be an innocent victim that
got infected at an airport. ;^)

Bob