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Free Wifi Hotspots


GeoDiver/GeoGrammy

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:):(

 

Um... does anyone here know of a "free Wi-Fi Hotspot" in Port Orchard; or is the nearest one in Bremerton? I tried Half-Canadian's link, but it looks like there isn't any.

 

Network Stumbler will probably be useful once I am able to comprehend it :) And what's this about hearing "Mary Had A Little Lamb" if I drive a certain speed?

 

Anyway, as a last resort I'll go to starbucks :D , but if theres any place in P.O. that would be great.

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:):(

 

Um... does anyone here know of a "free Wi-Fi Hotspot" in Port Orchard; or is the nearest one in Bremerton? I tried Half-Canadian's link, but it looks like there isn't any.

 

Network Stumbler will probably be useful once I am able to comprehend it :) And what's this about hearing "Mary Had A Little Lamb" if I drive a certain speed?

 

Anyway, as a last resort I'll go to starbucks :D , but if theres any place in P.O. that would be great.

This site does not list any for PO, but it does have a lot of information that you can use to find one. For example, one listing is for a QFC that has a coffee bar in the store, that would be a good place to start. The single commonality in most of these is coffee. Run netstumbler in the coffee shops, especially the mom & pop ones. Netstumbler pretty much runs itself; there is no mystery to getting it to work.

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B):lol:

 

Um... does anyone here know of a "free Wi-Fi Hotspot" in Port Orchard; or is the nearest one in Bremerton? I tried Half-Canadian's link, but it looks like there isn't any.

 

Network Stumbler will probably be useful once I am able to comprehend it B) And what's this about hearing "Mary Had A Little Lamb" if I drive a certain speed?

 

Anyway, as a last resort I'll go to starbucks B) , but if theres any place in P.O. that would be great.

NLS At one time I thought all of the Kitsap County Librarys had FREE WiFi. Manchester is listed as being free but that might be out of you way, but closer than Bremerton. I have used the one in East Bremerton but not the one downtown. I do not know if they close them down when they are closed or not.

Thanks Criminal for opening this topic. I have learned at lot. I have always been interested in anything FREE. Dick, W7WT

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This thread came at a very good time with lots of good info. I have a laptop on order and have been wondering about Wi-Fi. Wardriving looks like a fun spinoff of geocaching. Are there any Wi-Fi geocaches out there? You could "find" the cache and log it at the same time.......B) I suppose it would have to be rated a 5 for use of specialized equipment. Do the libraries stay up 24/7 or just durring open hours?

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...

You hooked your PDA to your GPS ? Cool. What kind of PDA/cable (and from where) ? I'd love to hook up my Legend to my Dell AximX30 and try to get PocketStreets+Trips to show coords. I know Belkin had a bunch of cheap cables to power both PDAs and GPSr from the lighter power for some kinds of hardware.

I just use the serial cable that came with the legend if connecting to a laptop. For the Compaq PDA that I have has a small multi-purpose port that includes serial. I "borrow" a short adapter cable from work that gives me the DB25 I need to connect to the Garmin cable. Works great, you might be able to borrow one too B)

 

You can connect to all the open access points. However, that doesn't mean you can get anywhere from it. Either intentionally or not by the owner. That and low signal strengh is what makes many of the unsecured ones useless. Not that I am advocating using someone's network without permission.

 

If I lived closer to a slow street I might set up my own WiFi "trap". You should know that once you are connected someone else's network they can monitor you or worse. Not that many would know how to do that.

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GeoRoo, I am in the process of creating a wifi geocache. I'm not sure how I will do it. Some suggestions might be good. What I thought I would do is give the coords to an area that had a wifi signal and that signal (SSID) would give you the coords to the cache. I guess it would be a puzzle cache. Or I could wardrive and find enough SSIDs that I could use them to create the coords to the cache. :grin:

 

Today I ordered my 5 dBi external antenna that will plug into my new wifi card. This combo will/should greatly increase my reception as I am wardriving looking for wifi's. After I placed both orders I turned to my wife and told her I just bought two of her presents to me for christmas. She just rolled her eyes. :blink:

 

Wardriving, or "The benign act of locating and logging wireless access points while in motion." is a lot like geocaching, but I don't think it is as fun. I'm just getting started so I'll have to see.

 

From his posts here, it sounds like Criminal knows alot about it.

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Today I ordered my 5 dBi external antenna that will plug into my new wifi card. This combo will/should greatly increase my reception as I am wardriving looking for wifi's. After I placed both orders I turned to my wife and told her I just bought two of her presents to me for christmas. She just rolled her eyes.  :blink:

 

Happy,

Which antenna did you order?...and from where? Thanks!

BTW, in case you were wondering why I have been "quiet and absent" on the recent "new" caches in Pierce County, I've been caching in Vancouver, BC since Friday. Returning home tonight.

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GeoDiver, I hope you have been injoying your caching up north. I spent a LOT of time researching Wardriving equipment. The best forum I have seen is NetSumbler.org Forum. Hands down they strongly recommend the 5 dBi Magnetic Mount Omni Antenna

from Fab-Corp.com. It is about the 22nd item on the "Omni Antenna page.

 

I also bought a Gold Classic 802.11b Card by Orinoco on eBay for the antenna to plug into. This is by far the most highly rated card on the forum for wardriving.

 

I hope this helps. Let's put together a wardrive rally. How's that sound? Or maybe those of us who have WiFi's can use our SSIDs to set up a multi-legged WiFi cache.

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this one's cool... "Orinoco Gold PRO WarDriving Kit - 7.0 dBi Ant 4x Range" on the wardriving.com site.. If it had a 802.11a/b/g card it would be a killer package, but even at 802.11b only, those Orinoco Gold cards are really good. I've used them for years.

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It's a thread in the off topic area, so cheapskates like you cannot access it. I'll violate the exclusivity of the off topic forums for you just this once.

 

DodgerMP wrote:

Ok, First a Wardriver is a person who simply is looking for wireless networks and the type of security the have. A true Wardriver would never connect to a Wireless AP that was not their own, that is a hacker, and if the network is open with all the default settings allowing any who drives by to connect and the person goes on the internet from your connection then it is only theft of services. If the person starts looking around at the files on you computer then it hacking.

 

This should explain the difference of Open Vs Shared.......

 

Using open authentication allows anyone to begin a conversation with the access point, and provides no security whatsoever on who can talk to the AP. When set to shared key mode the client begins by sending an association request to the AP. The AP then responds with a string of challenge text, which the client then encrypts using the WEP key (see below) and returns. If the text is encrypted correctly, the client is allowed to communicate with the AP, and move on to the next layer of security.

 

The weakness with this particular method is in the clear text transmission of the challenge string. By passively listening to the conversation, an attacker can obtain two of the three variables in the authentication equation; the clear text challenge string and what the challenge string looks like after it has been encrypted. By plugging these values into the RC4 equations, the attacker can easily solve for the shared authentication key. Furthermore, because the same keys are used for shared key authentication and WEP, when you use shared key authentication and it is compromised you have had your WEP keys compromised as well, meaning that an intruder could then decipher all traffic to and from the AP point and its clients. Ironically, the most secure setting of this feature is 'open authentication', allowing anyone to associate with your access points, and relying on other methods to handle security. While removing a layer of security may seem contradictory to making your network more secure, this particular layer is flawed and hurts far more than it helps.

 

There is no sure fire way to keep anyone off your Wireless AP. Using a laptop running Linux, Airsnort and a lot of time anyone can get on.

 

The best way to slow someone down and keep most regular people off are to change the default SSID and set it not to broadcast on its own, disable DHCP and use static IPs and not your standard 192.168.0.1-192.168.0.255, change the default channel, and enable MAC address filtering.

 

I hope this will help you out.

 

Some very good information can be found at the following sites.

 

World Wide War Drive

Another Wardriving site

 

and yes I do Wardrive and I do network security for the US Army.

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It's a thread in the off topic area, so cheapskates like you cannot access it.  I'll violate the exclusivity of the off topic forums for you just this once.

 

Hi Happy,

What Criminal is trying to say is, "If you took a little of that money you just spent on 'War-Driving' weapons and paid the meazly annual fee to be a premium member, you could get this info on your own". ;)

Luv Ya,

GeoDiver

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They then accessed Lowe's national computer system -- which is based in North Wilkesboro, N.C. -- and installed a program to hijack credit card information.

 

"I think the massive amount of potential loss that these defendants could have imposed was astounding, so that's what caused us to seek a substantial sentence against Mr. Salcedo," the Associated Press quoted federal prosecutor Matthew Martens saying.

 

It wasn't the WiFi-ness. It was the attempted theft of credit card numbers.

 

Furthermore, they were the subject of an FBI stakeout, because according to prosecutors, the trio accessed the network more than ten times last fall, and the sysadmin detected the software they'd installed on the network.

Edited by travisl
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You know, I've never really much liked the idea of buying anything over the Internet. Unfortunately sometimes that is the only option available. This story, however, just goes to show how insecure more computer systems are. I am surprised that there haven't been more class-action lawsuits against stores such as Lowe's for essentially "publishing" this information.

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Sorry for the double post but I thought this thread would be more appropriate to let those who care know there is a new WiFi geocache up in Gig Harbor. A Dark & Stormy Night #3: WiFi Wardrive. Have fun.

dadgum - I hope this wi-fi caching doesn't take off. I have enough trouble with the technical challenges of finding and hiding boxes. That and the numbers game could get more ridiculous <_<

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If you can have a double post, I think I can have a double reply. So, I will ask again if this is the very first WiFi cache? If so you have put Gig Harbor on the map.

Thanks, Dick, W7WT

 

I know someone will point out that it is already on the map. Hi

Edited by W7WT
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Since you asked, I had to do my research. Currently, there are nine caches (including mine) with the word WiFi in their description. However, only one actually uses the technology. The others have caches in the area of free WiFi's.

 

My cache is the first one in the United States! There is one in Scotland. It was placed only a few weeks ago.

 

First WiFi cache in the U.S.! Wooee! I'm trendy and didn't even know it. :rolleyes:

Edited by Happy Gillmore
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I now have a Dell laptop, Buffalo card, external antenna, Network Stumbler going and amazed at how many hotspots there are. Drive from Monroe to Kenmore popped up over 100 plus. Over half are open with out locks.......;) Thanks for all the info. on this thread it's been a gold mine.

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The Badge & the Butterfly Posted on Jan 8 2005, 11:03 PM

  Well...I have a cache on my fromt porch, and a wireless network that you can use. Find the cache, and log it from your laptop on my porch.

Ed 

You can turn your wireless network into a multi-leg geocahe. A fun and straight forward approach is to give a starting waypoint close to your network. The cacher would drive to the given coords and start "listening" for AP's (access points). When they find your AP the SSID would give the final waypoint to the cache. All you would have to do is change your SSID from "default", or whatever it is now to a coordinate like N 47° 19.100 W 122° 35.220. It worked for me.

 

I will be turning my AP into a geocache shortly. I talked to friends of mine who have wireless networks here in town who are excited to do the same. I am actually going to have the original WP at the Nelson's AP. Their SSID will give the coords to the Dickson's AP which will give them the coords to the final cache. Since these are friends of mine it will be easy to make sure the coords are correct.

 

You could be the first in your state to setup a true WiFi geocache.

Edited by Happy Gillmore
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Be the first FTF in the United States to find a WiFi geocache. That would be one for the diary! :lol:

I think I may be the first to DNF a wifi cache :huh:

I used up 1/2 the battery power of my PocketPC in the wee hours before the Gig Harbor Cache Machine. We got MAC addresses for all but one of the required access points but couldn't find the cache at the final coordinates that we came up with.

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Hi all,

 

Just thought I'd give an update on the original list for this thread for the Olympia area:

 

4th Ave Tav

210 4th Av E

Olympia, WA 98501

NEW! Good solid connectivity.

 

King Solomon's Reef

212 4th Av E

Olympia WA 98501

Arriving soon!

 

Caffe Vita

124 4th Avenue

Olympia WA 98501

Their AP is still active but they haven't fixed their DSL connection. LAME.

 

Kundalini Espresso Company

408 4th Avenue Southeast

Olympia WA 98501

CLOSED. No longer in business.

 

Clubside Cafe

406 4th Avenue Southeast

Olympia WA 98501

CLOSED. Remodeling and expanding into the old Kundalini location. Hope they still have free WiFi when they reopen.

 

Olympia Farmer's Market

700 Capitol Way

Olympia WA 98501

Changed ISPs and can no longer give out free WiFi.

 

Zipperz

412 Cherry Street Southeast

Olympia WA 98501

CLOSED. No longer in business.

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