Won’t Get Fooled Again
I’ve been lulled into complacency by wireless access, and now I’ve learned my lesson–the hard way.
All last week, I was traveling, and in each of several hotels, when my laptop found the wireless network, the popup message said something to the effect of, “Warning, this is an unsecured network, do you want to proceed anyway?” I needed to work, and there were no other options, and once I said yes I got onto what was clearly a site with the hotel’s seal of approval, so it seemed okay.
But then I got to Denver, and before heading to the Red Carpet Club, where I’d planned to send some files over their secure network, I stopped–I must confess–in the smoker’s bar. Where, I was delighted to see, I could plug in my laptop, so instead of just grabbing a couple of puffs and heading on, I sat down, plugged in, and ordered a drink, justifying to myself that I wasn’t wasting any work time.
At this point, I was only planning on organizing my notes. But up popped the little notice that says a wireless network has been detected. And when I looked at the menu, it showed free open access. My lucky day, I thought, as I had a few holes I needed to fill that required some online look-up.
I clicked into the network, tried to get online, and nothing happened. The little box said I was connected, with full signal strength. So I kept trying, until I could finally nab the waitress and ask her how to get on. She looked puzzled, and said the only network she knew of required paid access. I quickly tried to disconnect–and my computer wouldn’t respond. I had to unplug.
Enough of this, I thought, and headed for the Red Carpet Club. Where I promptly got locked out of the Internet access by a sign saying I was already connected. And then it started making funny beeping noises. I got paranoid and slunk out of the club, worried that some alarm would go off indicating me as someone who was introducing a virus into the system–or was simply an idiot. There were frequent announcements coming over the public address system about Threat Level Orange, so I thought maybe Internet access was being blocked all over the terminal–but was too embarrassed to ask.
I’ve heard of people who drive around to park outside the house of someone who has an unsecured network to tap into it, but I’d never heard of a scammer offering an unsecured network — although of course, in hindsight it sounds fraudulently logical. I can only hope that if I did spend five or ten minutes connected to a scam network, it was used only for tapping into extra computing power, and not to grab any info or plant any trojans. My laptop is going to get a good looking over before I plug it into my network at home again, that’s for sure.
–Mary Hunt, editor, eFlyer
November 6th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
I would say that it was probably an ad-hoc network that became available. An ad-hoc network is usually someone (mostly inadvertently) that allows other people to connect to the internet through his/her computer.
Imagine this: some other business traveler connects to the paid wireless network but has the ad-hoc option enabled. That creates a “free” internet access through his computer. Your computer detects his free network and tries to connect but, perhaps, he is so far away that the connection is too slow and times out (limited or no connectivity), giving you the impression you are not connect to a network at all. Until you disconnect from his network you won’t be able to connect to another. That’s most likely what happened
As a safety measure, I would disable the option to connect to this type of network. They are never safe as you never know what the “other person” is up to or has in his computer and you are pretty much opening a direct connection to your computer, so to speak.
Anyway, that’s a great The Who song
It used to bring me old teenage (wasteland?) memories but nowadays all that comes to mind is that CSI vignette 