Free Public wifi

daithimac

Anyone who rides the dart may be able to help me with this one.

I got an iPad a month ago and bring it in and out of work with me coming in to the city centre from the north side. I have the iPad hacked so that It will display the name and IP address of any wifi signal it gains access to.

I've noticed the last number of weeks that it has been picking up a signal under the name free public wifi. I have tried using it to access the internet but cannot get access. anyone know what this network is.

Random

is this not some default access point or something on the device itself? i seem to remember that coming up loads on my old itouch even when i was at home etc.

watty

It's a bug in Windows XP. You are seeing a Windows computer that has Adhoc neworking on.

if Ad hoc is enabled then that name is automatically copied from laptop to laptop!

search
"free public wifi" bug

I disable adhoc on all PCs/Laptops I setup and have Infrastructure only as default
http://blogs.chron.com/techblog/archives/2006/01/wifi-enabled_wi.html

Avoiding it
http://www.cnet.com/8301-13554_1-9941355-33.html
https://airheads.arubanetworks.com/vBulletin/showthread.php?t=1554

A bit better of explanation
http://scilib.typepad.com/science_library_pad/2008/04/free-public-wif.html

And how an AdHoc name copies itself
http://www.nmrc.org/pub/advise/20060114.txt

Fixed in XP SP3.

But if you are NOT using AdHoc, ON ANY OS, set your WiFi to Infrastructure only as Adhoc raises risk that you would be hacked, esp. if you have certain services running. (esp. Microsoft Client or File Sharing or Printer Sharing or Messaging or Telnet or FTP or uPnP/Home Streaming)