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So I was traveling through O'Hare airport last night and saw the signs for their wireless internet. I figured of course it's one of those "pay/login" types. I open my available wireless connections and there's one that says "Free Airport Wi-Fi" Oh wait it's a "Peer" connection type... that's not right.
I turn around and look at the sign again and see "SSID: concourse". So I open up Net Stumbler and there's the concourse one, I tried connecting to it and I was right, you have to pay for it, or have one of their service provider accounts to use it. But then there's a bunch of other Peer ones and one called "Free Airport Wi-Fi" It's signal strength is all over the map. Then it stops and another one pops up, on a different channel and a different MAC address.
And it's signal is doing the same thing. I pick my laptop up, walk away from the hordes of people into the halway of the terminal and the signal drops. Walk back and bam, there it is...
So I start looking for someone. Found a few, realized they weren't doing anything exciting... except for one guy. In the MIDDLE of the room, with his laptop on the seat next to him while he occasionally looked down at his screen. I don't know what program he was running but it didn't look familiar to me in 10 years of profesional PC work. His "pink" (that was the color of it) wireless card's activity light was going crazy, and he had a small silver/black laptop I've never seen before.
In the timeframe of 15 mins he changed MAC addresses on that Peer connection 4 times, 2 of which weren't even CLOSE to ones that looked legit.
Then the signal totally died... and he said a few things to a woman who was sitting next to him that seemed to sit next to him and get too friendly and he picked his laptop up and started walking down the terminal.
I told my wife I was going to ask him if he new anything about "Free Airport Wi-Fi".
I said "Excuse me sir" twice, the second time he turned around and I asked him like I knew everything about it and said "What do you know about Free Wi-Fi at the airport here?" He said "Excuse me, what do you mean" and I said "I think you know what I mean, what do you know about Free Wi-Fi". He said "I don't know" turned around and walked away. I yelled out "I think you do" and he ducked out into another seating area a few gates away.
He didn't look at the flight board, nothing! I watched him sit down, and flip his laptop open in that gate area.
I went back behind him (his back was to a pole now) and next to a woman I sat next to, flipped my laptop open (she was a hot late 30 something woman) and she asked what I was doing (I was obviously excited at finding someone doing this and knew I wasn't disgusing myself well, but I had the adrenalene flowing at this point). I told her "that guy right there is acting like free internet to the airport and probably hacking peoples laptops".
He went RIGHT back to that same program I hadn't seen and just sat there and "watched it". The Free Airport Wi-Fi signal was back on and by the time I got back to my orignal section where he was it was gone... So It had to be him.
I contemplated reporting it to security but you know those types of guys I would have reported it to, they would look at me like "I'm" the hacker (The low level TSA Dudes), and no matter who I asked to talk to (I would have tried for their computer security team) I think it would have been more trouble than it was worth. Not to mention my flight boarded 5 mins later.
So did I just go on a wild goose chase and let my imagination have its way with me, or could I possibly be correct?
I turn around and look at the sign again and see "SSID: concourse". So I open up Net Stumbler and there's the concourse one, I tried connecting to it and I was right, you have to pay for it, or have one of their service provider accounts to use it. But then there's a bunch of other Peer ones and one called "Free Airport Wi-Fi" It's signal strength is all over the map. Then it stops and another one pops up, on a different channel and a different MAC address.
And it's signal is doing the same thing. I pick my laptop up, walk away from the hordes of people into the halway of the terminal and the signal drops. Walk back and bam, there it is...
So I start looking for someone. Found a few, realized they weren't doing anything exciting... except for one guy. In the MIDDLE of the room, with his laptop on the seat next to him while he occasionally looked down at his screen. I don't know what program he was running but it didn't look familiar to me in 10 years of profesional PC work. His "pink" (that was the color of it) wireless card's activity light was going crazy, and he had a small silver/black laptop I've never seen before.
In the timeframe of 15 mins he changed MAC addresses on that Peer connection 4 times, 2 of which weren't even CLOSE to ones that looked legit.
Then the signal totally died... and he said a few things to a woman who was sitting next to him that seemed to sit next to him and get too friendly and he picked his laptop up and started walking down the terminal.
I told my wife I was going to ask him if he new anything about "Free Airport Wi-Fi".
I said "Excuse me sir" twice, the second time he turned around and I asked him like I knew everything about it and said "What do you know about Free Wi-Fi at the airport here?" He said "Excuse me, what do you mean" and I said "I think you know what I mean, what do you know about Free Wi-Fi". He said "I don't know" turned around and walked away. I yelled out "I think you do" and he ducked out into another seating area a few gates away.
He didn't look at the flight board, nothing! I watched him sit down, and flip his laptop open in that gate area.
I went back behind him (his back was to a pole now) and next to a woman I sat next to, flipped my laptop open (she was a hot late 30 something woman) and she asked what I was doing (I was obviously excited at finding someone doing this and knew I wasn't disgusing myself well, but I had the adrenalene flowing at this point). I told her "that guy right there is acting like free internet to the airport and probably hacking peoples laptops".
He went RIGHT back to that same program I hadn't seen and just sat there and "watched it". The Free Airport Wi-Fi signal was back on and by the time I got back to my orignal section where he was it was gone... So It had to be him.
I contemplated reporting it to security but you know those types of guys I would have reported it to, they would look at me like "I'm" the hacker (The low level TSA Dudes), and no matter who I asked to talk to (I would have tried for their computer security team) I think it would have been more trouble than it was worth. Not to mention my flight boarded 5 mins later.
So did I just go on a wild goose chase and let my imagination have its way with me, or could I possibly be correct?
it's the perfect spot to be in if you want to buy yourself that $6000 plasma TV with someone elses credit card