SlashNOT

Captain Shenanigan writes: Inspired by the high-altitude high-speed WLAN mapping of Delta Farce but lacking an airplane, San Diego etherpunks Billy-Bob and Hans go low and slow to map out unsecured wireless access points. Not having a car (and aware that the sidewalk thing has been done) the duo plunge into the sewers instead, looking for places to scam free Internet access. An excerpt of their travelogue follows: “Hans and Me were talking about how cool it would be to find some places we could get on the Net but network admins here in San Diego have really been tightening up their WAPs. I guess that Ars Technica article was a big wakeup call or something. I mean, it used to be all you had to do was walk up to a building with a logo on the side, type it in as an SSID, and there you go. Well, since everything at the ground level has gotten locked down tighter than Hans’ wallet when I really need a beer, we decided to check out the underground scene.”

“It turns out that everything’s wide open down there. Our guess is that it’s basement programmers and accounting departments that think that a few feet of concrete and mud means they don’t have to secure their little workgroup WLAN. Sure, you have to put up with a bit of a stink and crawling to get access, and if you’re smart you’ll put your laptop in one of those big ziplock bags before you go (that’s a lesson lernt the hard way) but hey–it’s free Internet, and that’s worth something.”

“We’d post a map of our findings but we’re concerned that those corporate networks might get exploited and we don’t want the legal hassle. Besides, next thing you know there’d be tons of other homeless people clogging up the sewers to get free net access and taking all the good spots.”