[MLB-WIRELESS] Viral free wireless c/o MS

[clae at tpg.com.au]

Free Public WiFi
Copied and pasted without alteration from http://jstn.cc/post/63070826

"Free Public WiFi"

Have you seen this wireless network? I see it *everywhere*, and it’s so
suspicious because it’s always ad-hoc (meaning broadcasting from a
computer rather than a regular access point). I imagined for a long time
it was part of a virus; it waits for someone to connect, redirects to a
page that exploits some hole in Internet Explorer, scrapes your hard
disk and sends your social security number to Russia, sets itself up as
“Free Public WiFi”, repeat.

After seeing it for the thousandth time at the train station
Philadelphia yesterday I decided to look it up. Turns out it’s not a
virus (at least not in the usual sense) but rather an interesting fuckup
on Microsoft’s part, with viral consequences.

Basically, if Windows can’t connect to a preferred network that happens
to be ad-hoc it creates the network itself with the same name. At some
point, somebody was connected to a real ad-hoc network called “Free
Public WiFi”. They went to another location where it didn’t exist, their
laptop helpfully recreated the network, more people connected to it (and
probably disconnected when it didn’t work), those people carried it with
them somewhere else, and the cycle has been repeating ever since.