Wi-Fi Pineapple Hacking Device Sells Out At DEF CON 132
darthcamaro writes "At the recent DEF CON conference over the weekend, vendor were selling all kinds of gear. But one device stood out from all the others: the Wi-Fi Pineapple — an all in one Wi-Fi hacking device that costs only $80 (a lot cheaper than a PwnPlug) and powered by a very vibrant open source community of users. Pineapple creator Darren Kitchen said that 1.2 Pineapple's per minute were sold on the first day of DEF CON (and then sold out). The Pineapple run Linux, based on OpenWRT, is packed with open source tools including Karma, DNS Spoof, SSL Strip, URL Snarf, Ngrep, and more and is powered by g a 400MHz Atheros AR9331 MIPS processor, 32MB of main memory and a complete 802.11 b/g/n stack. Is this a tool that will be used for good — or for evil?"
Re:Holy False Dichotomy Batman! (Score:5, Informative)
vendor were selling all kinds of gear.
1.2 Pineapple's per minute were sold
The Pineapple run Linux, based on OpenWRT, is packed with open source tools
I, for one, am imagining a world where a Slashdot "editor" can parse the English language and fix typos. Blows my mind, but there it is.
Re:Convenient, but still overpriced (Score:5, Informative)
Retro 2008 (Score:4, Informative)
Wow. This was news when they were released back in 2008. It is interesting to see the devices becoming popular again.
Back in the day they were demoed by putting the little unit and batteries in a novelty plastic cup shaped like a pineapple. The lid had a hole for a straw that was just the right size for a wifi antenna.
You can buy those cups on Ebay and in party stores.
No grasp of F/LOSS concept? (Score:5, Informative)
While you claim others "don't get the concept", you seem to have totally missed the cornerstone of how F/LOSS is monetized.
It makes perfect sense for someone knowledgeable and skilled to assemble exactly the right hardware components, and compile+install just the right F/LOSS software components, into an easy-to-use appliance, and sell these at whatever price point the market is willing to pay. People are not paying for the "licenses" they are paying for the labor that went into combining all the supplied pieces together - and perhaps also for getting future support and developmen. In other words people are paying for professional services in a nice and understandable package.
I have no idea why you feel the need to bash this concept with such contempt, but this approach is just about the most popular way to monetize F/LOSS on the planet. It is also shows the clear strengths of F/LOSS: that anyone can take the software, modify it, expand it, improve it, and share it with all other customers without negative impact to the original supplier.
If you want to take the software and install it on a PC, go right ahead. Feel free to install other drivers in the process. Make a laptop-version and share it as much as you like. Go right ahead. But while you may be perfectly willing to spend loads of time on this, others may not. Not all network experts want to mess with assembling their own hardware. Or spend endless nights compiling new versions of [insert-whatever-FLOSS-component-here] just to make a brief packet analysis in the field. It is not trivial to compile and combine all the right F/LOSS products included in the packaged mentioned here and some people are happy to pay someone else to get that job done.
The fact that people are willing to put money on the table for the service and labor this man has produced with F/LOSS software is by no means "retarded". It is a testament to the viability of F/LOSS economy, and clear proof that customer value can be added to F/LOSS without bogging customers down in complex licenses and EULAs.
Ah, damn, I noticed too late you posted as AC. Well, since you won't stand by your words, I guess producing a decent and intelligent answer was a waste of time...
- Jesper