how to turn a pc in a wireless router without the use of drivers

As I frequently travel around SE Asia, I found it increasingly difficult to get online with my own laptop in an internet caf=E9.

A solution would be to turn the pc, you get assigned, into a wireless router and access the net from your laptop through the router. You would need to do this however without installing any network drivers. The machines are pretty much locked down and do not allow driver installs.

An option I am considering is to use a USB device that behaves like a wifi stick but looks to the pc like a memory stick. The wifi tcp packets from the laptop would be picked up by the stick and saved as files. A standalone little app running on the pc would find these files and send them through the internet. Received tcp packets would travel the opposite direction.

The Eye-fi sd card (combined with usb-sd adapter) looks pretty much what I am looking for on the hardware side, but unfortunately its use is limited and until now there was not much luck hacking it.

So my question is if anyone can think of a better way to tackle this problem or could point me to a more appropriate h/w solution.

Thank you, Toffie

Reply to
backupaccjud
Loading thread data ...

On Wed, 12 Nov 2008 11:57:13 -0800 (PST), snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote in :

My solution is to use high-speed cellular data.

Reply to
John Navas

Look what the cat dragged in - :

Why not just use "the pc, you get assigned"?

Reply to
Axel Hammerschmidt

On 13 Nov 2008 19:50:40 GMT, Axel Hammerschmidt wrote in :

Lots of reasons; e.g., Possible keylogger Lack of personal data files. etc.

I never ever use public computers for anything the least bit sensitive.

Reply to
John Navas

John Navas:

Nor should you then use a laptop...

: From: Donna Ohl : : Subject: How can I tell if a keylogger got added to my PC while I was : in Beijing? : : Newsgroups: : alt.internet.wireless,alt.privacy.spyware,microsoft.public.security : : Message-ID: : : Date: Sun, 26 Oct 2008 21:59:26 -0700

That said, why does one want to use the locked down computer as a wireless router? Bring along your own wireless "pocket router" and plug the cable from the locked down computer in and use that.

Usefull wireless pocket routers could be a D-Link DWL-G730AP or an ASUS WL-330gE.

Or just connect the laptop.

I once plugged a cable from my Apple Powebook's (Gbit) Ethernet port into a vacant port at the Royal Library in Copenhagen and did a software update - over 100 MB - from Apple in just under a minute. A few weeks later I returned to find that all the public computers were now connected by cable to ports hidden behind wall covers.

I think I may have "flattened" the whole library's internet connection with my little stunt.

Reply to
Axel Hammerschmidt

Yes: pc in internet shops, are, as a rule, infected. You think that teenager that was online before you was really careful with the shop's pc ?

More reasons: the keyboard is in another language and it's really hard to find certain keys. Takes a lot longer to type when they switch the keys and labels around. And don't forget about the inevitable broken space bar, etc from gaming abuse. Not to mention that it's the crappiest keyboard around, the mouse is set a foot up with the monitor on a short cord - basically everything you could imagine about the interface can be really bad - as long as somebody can still use it, somehow, it's rentable.

I was in town the other day and had to get into my email for a package confirmation code so I went to an internet shop. But I could not sign in to my email for the life of me. FINALLY I typed the PW into a text editor so I could see it and figured out that one key related to my PW was not working on the keyboard. I really hope there were no keyloggers, it did seem like a well managed shop... but.

More reasons: the browser has all the automatic settings you hate. There are so many toolbars on the browser that you can hardly see the pages. There are ten useless programs running in the background that clog up the pc....on top of the infections....

Steve

Reply to
seaweedsl

indeed. Most of my work I can do off-line as soon as I synced my e- mail, blogs, etc.. but for this you need to get your own laptop connected to the net . Also security is really a big issue, the question is not if your passwords gets compromised, but when! I always checked the date I last logged into my email and in the 3 month traveling I had to change it five times. Worse was when they got the password of the site I was maintaining and put it full of nasty exploits at which point it was blacklisted.

Reply to
backupaccjud

In practice connecting the laptop or a router is quite a bit of hassle which the owners of most 30cent/hour internetcafe's don't want to be bothered with. They will throw you out when you start fiddling with their cables or start asking difficult questions. But lately it has become totally impossible as most cafe's use a central console to control the pc's remotely. This means that a certain piece of configured client software is needed on the client pc that talks with the console which will allow a connection for whatever timeframe you requested. This means that the only option to get through to the web is through that computer. Plugging in something that looks like a memory stick in a usb port however would not be a problem and you would be going over the 'protected' pipe.

Reply to
backupaccjud

I've used a Linksys WTR54 for years now. Works great (at least in US 110vac outlets).

Plug it in-between an existing PC, tap the config button and you're set. In a few rare cases you need to take the added step of using the web config page on it to tweak a few things. But more often than not it 'just works'. The trick being, however, is you need to be physically plugging and unplugging network wiring. Not something likely to be possible at most cafes.

There's no easy way to just plug in a passive device that steals the host's network connection. It would be a huge security risk. Anyone with access to a USB port could plug in such a device and instantly steal access to the PC's network. You can no doubt imagine why nobody would want to allow that.

Reply to
Bill Kearney

Yep, but it's already here. Buffalo and some other USB vendors thought it would be nice to have the USB wireless device install itself without using any downloaded or CDROM based software. Buffalo calls it their "WLI-U2-KG54-AI Wireless-G Keychain USB 2.0 Adapter with Auto Installation".

They included some memory on the USB device, pre-loaded with the Windoze driver software. Plug it in, autostart installs the drivers, and everything should just function. Right. I'll spare you the list of situations where that great idea literally doesn't work, but if you have a very generic and insecure Windoze XP installation, it does function. A clue is that they now ship an updated driver disk with the device. It doesn't take much imagination to figure out that modifying or adding to the USB driver install can load just about anything manner of malware onto the target machine.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

On 14 Nov 2008 17:27:58 GMT, Axel Hammerschmidt wrote in :

Nonsense -- my laptop is extremely secure. Look up Security on the Lenovo website.

How nice.

Reply to
John Navas

On Fri, 14 Nov 2008 12:30:10 -0800 (PST), snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote in :

Which is why I use high-speed wireless. Problem solved almost anyplace, even well out at sea. :)

Reply to
John Navas

On Fri, 14 Nov 2008 12:17:51 -0800 (PST), snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote in :

I use SSL connections, which protects my passwords. And a different password for every service and website.

Reply to
John Navas

And your experience with it it SE ASIA cafe locations is, what? Nil? Like most other things apparently.

Reply to
Bill Kearney

On Sun, 16 Nov 2008 10:29:57 -0500, "Bill Kearney" wrote in :

I don't care about SE Asia.

I leave that distinction to you.

Reply to
John Navas

And yet the original post was from someone specifically asking about using it there. Get a clue.

Reply to
Bill Kearney

On Sun, 16 Nov 2008 20:39:23 -0500, "Bill Kearney" wrote in :

It's called topic drift. Get a clue.

Reply to
John Navas

This would unfortunately not solve the original problem as the drivers are there on the wifi-stick and would still need to be installed for which you would need admin access (which will not be provided). Also this would not behave as a router but only allows your computer to connect TO a wireless router instead of behaving LIKE a wireless router.

Uses of this idea go a lot further than just connectivity on a locked down cybercafe computer. Anyplace you would go with your laptop you would be able to setup wifi as soon as a computer connected to the internet is found (you could actually get something done when visiting the in-laws!). Also for snooping this opens up a whole new line of attacks.

Reply to
backupaccjud

Perhaps you should look at one of these:- It is small, can work in client mode and according to the web page "For added mobility, the DWL-G730AP can be powered over USB if power outlets are not available".

Reply to
LR

I don't understand the problem. Could you describe what you're trying to accomplish?

As I see it, you want plug and play functionality, without any drivers. You can't do that with a USB port. You might be able to do that with Linux, which uses BTLD (boot time loadable drivers). You can do it with ethernet, but only if the device were totally self contained (power, firmware, wireless client, DHCP server, firewall, etc) and all that is required is plugging the ethernet cable into the laptop ethernet port. There are several portable "travel" wi-fi routers/clients that come close. For example, the WTR54G:

Unless I'm missing something here, there is no need for the client conencted radio to act as a router. Routers connect two networks. In the typical coffee shop, there is only one network.

Examples please?

There are automatic connecting wireless (software) clients available. They do SSID scans, and try to connect to anything and everything it finds. My Verizon XV6700 cell phone does that. It's an ugly, slow, error prone, and insecure process, that methinks is a rather lousy idea. However, I will admit it's convenient. If I were evil (well, I am evil, but don't let that bother you), I could setup a virtual access point in a coffee shop, and just wait for such clients to connect to me. I would then pass the traffic on to the real access point. This is called "man in the middle" attack, and is a common way to sniff passwords. It's also fairly difficult to detect unless you know the MAC address of the real hotspot wireless access point.

Yes, but not new. Man in the middle has been around for quite a while.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Cabling-Design.com Forums website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.