Why do people have to be so annoying to disturb your wifi with a wristbandwatch? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 02, 2022, 12:19:24 am
content: Yesterday night I visited an hacker club. I was downloading some pdf from their private network when suddenly the whole WiFi went down with the local Cisco router blinking the red-alert line like a deranged dog on speed.When you see a Cisco router blinking that way ... well, it's a Kind of WTF is happening? Are we on the set of the Matrix movie? Is the line taped and agents will come here to arrest us all - I don't know why - maybe because someone has been found who is secretly storing in his/her computer some confidential datasheet about some weird electronic document?!?I was going to seriously worry ... then I looked at the guy in the corner. It was the kind of dude dressed with a hood of the tracksuit on the head, which I don't know why it should make someone more "hacker-ish", but the first thing that makes you understand the kind of person you are looking at ... shoes and the wristband watch.Nobody would wear stiff toe shoes, they are uncomfortable for running, that is, if you get caught you have to run as fast as possible, not in those shoes! And when your wristwatch looks like clumsy smartwatch that is vastly larger than your wrist, you are certainly not someone who is able to hide his/her hacking-tools.Moral of the story a dick who is only making fun of us.Indeed, a closer second look revealed the dude was wearing an ESP8266 WiFiDeauther Watch(Amazon link)So, a tools that makes no purpose except making fun of other people's WiFi networks.Which brings some questions in my head: Why people do buy this kind of crap? And, why people use this kind of crap to disturb?Thanks God, the Deauther only works at 2.4Ghz, it cannot attack any 5Ghz network, but it can shutdown even a B.A.T.M.A.N. mesh-network, 2.4Ghz but used for domotic not for common WiFi.The 2.4GHz WiFi kept staying down with the poor router continuing to safely bling red-alarm, I switched to 5Ghz and got served by a neigh-board's network. The signal power was not good, but out of curiosity, I vivisected theGitHubof the Deauther Wristband watch and found a few notes aboutQuoteWhich -!YeAh!- sounds like the stupid usb-killer that was advertised as "made for testing the over voltage protection of your usb ports" and can destroy your laptop if someone plugs it into your usb-port, and, worse still, enables everyone who has less than 10 USD to spare to recreate the projectI don't want to over react, just in my head, it's like when we talk about guns. Guns can be used to have fun at the shooting range, or to show the world that you are a complete moron but able to shoot your feet.I mean,the tool is not the problem, what people do with tools is the problem, but why do they have to sell that crap on Amazon and easy accessible online store? To buy a gun you have to show your identity document, and have a firearm license, you cannot buy a Gun from Amazon.So, I think to buy a device that can disrupt your WiFi or destroy your USB-ports or/and motherboard you should have a similar document.Otherwise ... morons like that dude can easily buy such a crap on Amazon and easily disturb your business.Can't they?Hey, oh? No one died, no one was arrested, and no computer was destroyed or burned. Just, his trick wasted 30 minutes of time, then I was late and I couldn't finish downloading my pdfs. I shot him a dirty look and went out for a drink.

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 02, 2022, 12:37:08 am
content: INAL - but I suspect he could have found himself in some hot water if he was pulled up on that by officialdom.

author: eti
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 03, 2022, 12:43:41 am
content: Totally off-topic, but that text formatting... wow... a new paragraph for every sentence? Please format it in a more readable manner, thank you

author: Ian.M
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 03, 2022, 01:23:33 am
content: At least its notbold puce, or all large font or devoid of punctuation or capitals, or an unholy wall of unparagraphed text. Unless you are reading on a small screen mobile device, excessive use of paragraph breaks is far more tolerable than the habitual posting style of some other contributors!

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 03, 2022, 01:34:06 am
content: iagreeitscerTAinlyalotbetterthansomeoFthewritingstylesweveseenusedhEreitsespeciallyIrritatinwhenthosewhodoareofFendedbyhavingsuchthingsbroughttotheirattentionwitharecommendationthattheyimprovetheirefforts

author: Ian.M
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 03, 2022, 01:52:08 am
content: *NOW* I know why Dave wont let us have a Dislike button, because I'd have a hard time resisting using it on posts like your 💩 'specimen' above.

author: Someone
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 03, 2022, 01:56:16 am
content: Quote from: Ian.M on May 03, 2022, 01:23:33 amRamp it up:tepid greenblurry greyQuote

author: John B
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 03, 2022, 02:19:27 am
content: HTML blink tags?

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 03, 2022, 02:48:45 am
content: A good reason to switch over to WPA3. Most devices built in the last few years will support it. Any legacy devices should be relegated to their own dedicated WPA2 network where it's "best effort" and if some clown wants to play games, it doesn't bring down the entire network.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 03, 2022, 02:51:52 am
content: Don't even need WPA3, we've had PMF for 13 years - if only any lazy incompetent consumer crap-peddler would take ten seconds to turn it on.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 03, 2022, 02:55:13 am
content: Quote from: Monkeh on May 03, 2022, 02:51:52 amYeh that's another way of doing it, but why go for a bandaid solution, particularly if you're got commercial gear like Cisco/Meraki, Ubiquiti, Aruba etc...WPA3 offers a bunch of other advantages as well.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 03, 2022, 02:57:50 am
content: Quote from: Halcyon on May 03, 2022, 02:55:13 amOh, sure, WPA3's the way to go now. It just annoys the hell out of me that for the nearly 10 years WPA3 didn't exist we already had a solution to this problem which nothing used, because for the most part device manufacturers wouldn't update their config files to turn on the functionality written for them for free!*grumble*

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 03, 2022, 04:08:19 am
content: Quote from: DiTBho on May 02, 2022, 12:19:24 amWhy wouldn't the managers of the club eject the offending person and ban them from returning until they show more curtesy?

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 03, 2022, 06:57:58 am
content: Quote from: IanB on May 03, 2022, 04:08:19 amGood point, it is currently under discussion, but that guy showed a big security problem with a Cisco router, so this is the first thing to be fixed.

author: 2N3055
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 03, 2022, 07:34:04 am
content: Quote from: DiTBho on May 02, 2022, 12:19:24 amWow and lo and behold there was a hacker there.....What a surprise....

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 03, 2022, 07:48:54 am
content: WiFi Deauth attacks are useful for a different reason.They are usually paired with a access point spoffing device. So the deuath attack is used to kick users off the existing network and then when the device attempts to automatically reconnect you can have your spoofed AP hop in and let them connect to it. Repeat the process until everyone is on your fake AP and now you can do man in the middle attacks since all of the users traffic is passing trough hardware you control. So you can sniff the traffic or even modify it on the fly.Then again a fair bit of hacking is focused on causing people inconvenience on purpose, so in that aspect just knocking the wifi offline is considered success for those. This is no different than DDOSing a website, just on a smaller scale.

author: timenutgoblin
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 03, 2022, 07:52:22 am
content: Quote from: eti on May 03, 2022, 12:43:41 amTo be fair, not all word processing programs use the default line spacing of '1'. Some word processors have a line spacing of 2 or more lines making the start of a new sentence appear to look like a new paragraph has been started instead.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 03, 2022, 08:09:14 am
content: Quote from: eti on May 03, 2022, 12:43:41 amAnd at least it’s not hard line breaks, which some people here do under the mistaken impression that this is a good idea, so that lines aren’t crazy wide, not realizing that line breaks aren’t the same across devices (and that the correct way to correct an excessive line width is to resize your damned browser window rather than run everything maximized at all times.)The result, when viewing on mobile or with a window made narrow, is text that looks like this:There were ten in the bed and the little one said: “Roll over,[soft line break]roll over!” So[hard line break]they all rolled over and one fell out. There were nine in thebed and thelittle one said: “Roll over, roll over!” So they all rolled overand one fellout. There were eight in the bed and the little one said: “Rollover,roll over!” So they all rolled over and one fell out. […]

author: newbrain
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 03, 2022, 10:11:55 am
content: Quote from: 2N3055, edited by newbrain on May 03, 2022, 07:34:04 amThere, FTFY.If you buy that kind of implement, the suspicion you are an asshole is high: a hacker will generally buy a cheaper and more convenient dev board for experimenting.If you use it without authorization, there is no doubt, you are definitely an asshole.Quote from: Brumby on May 02, 2022, 12:37:08 amIANAL too*, but in Sweden they would assuredly be in breach of theLEK(Law on Electronic Communication): you are not allowed to even possess jamming equipment of any sort**, much less use it, and this falls squarely in the category.So, an asshole, and quite probably a criminal too - not a hacker in my book.* But I recently had to study a tiny bit to get my ham radio license.** To study jamming resilience for some of our devices, there were quite a lot of legal hoops to jump.

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 03, 2022, 12:58:08 pm
content: Quote from: Ian.M on May 03, 2022, 01:52:08 amThen you might be pleased to know that it reeeeeally cause me to cringe all through the effort.

author: 2N3055
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 03, 2022, 01:08:36 pm
content: Quote from: newbrain on May 03, 2022, 10:11:55 amNo, you didn't fix it. You applied a forced positive bias to a term that is not positive per se..Hacking can be kids playing with computers in certain way and also stealing from the bank..Lines in that community are gray..... Pun intended...

author: timenutgoblin
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 03, 2022, 11:24:28 pm
content: Quote from: tooki on May 03, 2022, 08:09:14 amThat sounds like an analogy for a parallel-in serial-out shift register.

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 03, 2022, 11:47:37 pm
content: Quote from: 2N3055 on May 03, 2022, 01:08:36 pmThe Hacking theme of the night wasdiscussing a new custom-made keyboard that looks like IBM RT3200 but ergonomic and with more featuresDeskthority-like discussions about custom-made keyboards: 60% vs 70% for a CyberdeckComplete reverse engineering of some keyboards used for graphing calculators, such as the TI-kb which I recently destroyed due to battery acid leakProject Mooka, a Cyberdeck, Cyberpunk Gibson style, but made with Ikea' wood partsSome good CCC-like talk about tmux with some hacks to make it able to save it and resume sessionsPartial reverse-engineering of the DEC multi-session protocol used by vt650 and of the crossbar matrix chip used in old Unix workstations, unrelated, only someone said there was progress with both, and here were the pdf files I was trying to download when the Wifi collapsedThings like that.Kinds of hackers, kinds of hacking

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2022, 06:27:20 am
content: Yeah that is more of a retro hardware hacking event then.When people hear about hacking events they think about things like DefCon that is more about computer security or things like capture the flag events where people compete to hack into vulnerable machines on the network.One should definitely be careful with connecting to a random wifi at those events.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2022, 11:34:57 pm
content: Quote from: timenutgoblin on May 03, 2022, 11:24:28 pmIs that children’s song not known in the UK?

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 05, 2022, 01:37:28 am
content: Quote from: tooki on May 04, 2022, 11:34:57 pmBut timenutgoblin has an Australian flag?Also, yes, the song is known in the UK.

author: timenutgoblin
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 05, 2022, 01:49:34 am
content: I am aware of the song. That was implied when I mentioned that it sounded like an analogy.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 05, 2022, 05:13:47 am
content: Oops, sorry about the flag!!! On my phone the flag icons are so small that they look almost the same without zooming in!!! (And I was tired, so my brain went “blue with a bit of red blurred in” and ran with it…)