Unfinished Windows 7 Hotspot Feature Exploited 234
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Engadget: "It wasn't all that long ago that Microsoft was talking up the Virtual WiFi feature developed by Microsoft Research and set for inclusion in Windows 7, but something got lost along the road to release day, and the functionality never officially made it into the OS. As you might expect with anything as big and complicated as an operating system though, some of that code did make it into the final release, and there was apparently enough of it for the folks at Nomadio to exploit into a full fledged feature. That's now become Connectify, a free application from the company that effectively turns any Windows 7 computer into a virtual WiFi hotspot — letting you, for instance, wirelessly tether a number of devices to your laptop at location where only an Ethernet jack is available, or even tether a number of laptops together at a coffee shop that charges for WiFi."
Re:Wow (Score:2, Insightful)
That is if you can get Wi-Fi working on it of course.
Re:Bloat... (Score:2, Insightful)
You non-haters need to start hating more.
Re:Bloat... (Score:3, Insightful)
And if Microsoft and Windows are one of your biggest concerns in the World, you really need to get a grip and a life.
Where does feeling compelled to pontificate about personal philosophy on the internet fit in on that scale?
Re:Stealing (Score:3, Insightful)
Bandwidth isn't the only limited resource. Physical space is a limited resource.
That "overpriced" coffee includes the rent for the space (resources) you take up. If the place is charging for WiFi then it is because too many people were ordering a single small coffee of the day and then plunking themselves down for the day with their laptop and not ordering anything else.
If you like the coffee house enough to go there and make use of its services you should also be willing to pay for them. Really good coffee houses are hard to find and its a shame when a group of freeloaders disrupts things so that enough of the paying regulars go somewhere else and the place goes under.
When enough of the WiFi leeches become paying customers, the WiFi might become free again. If something is annoying for the regulars a good manager would want to change that, if it was affordable to do so. Pay WiFi is annoying to everybody.
"I like making use of your establishment but I don't feel the need to contribute towards its ongoing operations." seems to be all too common of an attitude these days.
Re:Bloat... (Score:1, Insightful)
Open services and OS hooks can be tremendous liabilities when it comes to securing said OS. The best advice is to disable all services you aren't using - not pile them on and leave them open.
Re:just like.. internet sharing (Score:2, Insightful)
It's odd you should say this, because I've had a Windows guru/sysadmin try several times to get this working (with his Dell running XP), and every time he's given up after about 45 minutes of messing with configuration settings. I myself tried it on both of my work-issued PCs (an HP and a Lenovo, both running XP) and found it completely impossible. Of the many Windows users I know, none have ever successfully used their laptop as an AP or a reverse bridge (providing connectivity over ethernet from a single wireless connection).
Therefore, you are either lying, or a statistical anomaly. I trust you're recounting the story accurately, so I'm going to conclude that your success is the exception rather than the rule.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
This is not an exploit as in a vulnerability, this is exploiting a feature in the sense of taking advantage of and using it. The story is just that Microsoft released the OS without doing this themselves. It's entirely possible that Microsoft intended to release something down the road that enabled all of this, so it may make sense to ship the OS with most of the base code so that it doesn't need to be downloaded again later.
According to TFA the lower-level implementation code was there, but the driver-level code had not been finished because of an apparent lack of driver support. The company who finished this feature says that they realized that they already had all of the needed code in their other networking products.
But, let's be serious, you just wanted to write "M$", didn't you?
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
It appears the UI isn't in Windows 7, but the feature is definitely there. If you have Windows 7 with a recent WiFi driver (virtual WLAN support is required for Win7 logo program), just type "netsh wlan start hostednetwork" and it'll create the virtual WLAN. Type "netsh wlan set hostednetwork" to see the options for SSID, passphrase, etc. The documentation for this is on MSDN [microsoft.com].
Re:Stealing (Score:5, Insightful)
Is Engadget going to instruct us on how to distract the employees while you pour free coffee into your thermos too?
Hrm... Bad analogy.
The Cofeeshop already sold you the coffee (bandwidth) by the temporary key and you are simply pouring it in someone else's cup free of charge by running windows 7.
Another bad analogy. Okay, my turn to play the silly moral analogy game...
This is more akin to visiting a place that gives free refills, and you constantly pouring it in someone else's cup, then doing the same for all your friends, in the process using far more coffee than you would reasonably have drunk yourself. You know damn well that wasn't the deal that was being offered. (*)
You're ultimately gaming the system- regardless of what "agreement" you think you have with them, it's probably against the spirit of the deal. Doing this type of thing with (e.g.) small businesses that aren't too assholish is ultimately what forces them to include irritating small-print restrictions on such services which I'm willing to bet people would be the first to whine about.
(*) Please *don't* say "that was the agreement I get an hour's free Internet with my $1.50 coffee, it's mine, I can do what I like with it, their bad business model isn't my problem". There probably wasn't an "agreement" in that much detail- lots of thing in a given society function on implicit understanding of how they work (e.g. you don't get arrested for trespassing if you enter some random shop because any reasonable person would say that's how shops work). Or they may well have some small print in some terms and conditions that you (understandably) didn't want to read before you took up their offer. Or whatever... even if it was "legal", see the final paragraph above.
Re:Stealing (Score:4, Insightful)
"Um, if the coffee house let you use wifi all day after purchasing a single item, what is wrong with taking advantage of that? The coffee house goes under? So what, it was a bad business plan then and should be left to die."
This is why we can't have nice things.
"Ya right, like corportations aren't trying to screw you out of every cent possible either. Turn about is fair play you know."
Not every business is a soulless corporation... Though behavior like that will be sure to leave the big corps as the only ones left standing.