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Comcast Is Turning The US Into Its Own Private Hotspot | TechCrunch

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Tom Johnson

Comcast Is Turning The US Into Its Own Private Hotspot | TechCrunch

http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/11/comcast-is-turning-the-us-into-its-own-private-hotspot/?ncid=tcdaily

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Owen Densmore

Re: Comcast Is Turning The US Into Its Own Private Hotspot | TechCrunch

Administrator

That's why we buy our own modems.

That said, it is a fascinating idea .. creating an internet via modems. If Comcast weren't evil, I bet some of us would allow it. Consider Google, for example, giving away broadband but with the same hotspot idea.

Sorta like the idea we tossed around long ago: start a company that gives away computers, for which you provide care and feeding (electric, network), but we get 1/4 of the computer resources. Immediate "super computer" of sorts.

-- Owen

On Wed, Jun 11, 2014 at 10:28 AM, Tom Johnson <[hidden email]> wrote:

http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/11/comcast-is-turning-the-us-into-its-own-private-hotspot/?ncid=tcdaily

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Roger Critchlow-2

Re: Comcast Is Turning The US Into Its Own Private Hotspot | TechCrunch

In reply to this post by Tom Johnson

Oh, that's why they've been pitching their awesome WiFi all these months, because it has this trapdoor in it.

I wonder if this means they're going to start supporting https://www.eff.org/wp/open-wi-fi-and-copyright-primer-network-operators, wouldn't that be a kick in the pants?

More likely they'll be heavily shaping the traffic over the free WiFi channel to benefit their corporate content, beggars can't be choosers, unless you're a corporate beggar stealing from your customers.

-- rec --

On Wed, Jun 11, 2014 at 10:28 AM, Tom Johnson <[hidden email]> wrote:

http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/11/comcast-is-turning-the-us-into-its-own-private-hotspot/?ncid=tcdaily

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Marcus G. Daniels

Re: Comcast Is Turning The US Into Its Own Private Hotspot | TechCrunch

On Wed, 2014-06-11 at 10:54 -0600, Roger Critchlow wrote:
> Oh, that's why they've been pitching their awesome WiFi all these
> months, because it has this trapdoor in it.

Everyone can run Tor servers over these neighborhood hotspots.
Let the FBI send their subpoenas to Comcast. Win, win.

Marcus

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Parks, Raymond

Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: Comcast Is Turning The US Into Its Own Private Hotspot | TechCrunch

My understanding is that the Comcast "free" wifi is a separate SSID connecting to a separate VLAN. This means that only Comcast customers can leech off other Comcast customers (supposedly the traffic is not counted against the modem customer's cap but the extra traffic could affect the customer) and some level of attribution is possible. Of course, you could pull off Marcus' idea by sniffing wifi traffic of real Comcast customers looking for that SSID, changing your server's MAC to match the Comcast customer, and then running Tor. I would expect that using the Comcast leech service would require some sort of login - but I know of two common methods to bypass that hurdle. Sometimes I never even see the login requirement because I don't use http and even then it should be possible to get Comcast customers to give you their userids and passwords (hopefully the one they use to control their account) through spoofing the Comcast leech SSID.

Ray Parks

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On Jun 11, 2014, at 11:16 AM, Marcus G. Daniels wrote:

On Wed, 2014-06-11 at 10:54 -0600, Roger Critchlow wrote:

Oh, that's why they've been pitching their awesome WiFi all these

months, because it has this trapdoor in it.

Everyone can run Tor servers over these neighborhood hotspots.
Let the FBI send their subpoenas to Comcast. Win, win.

Marcus

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Marcus G. Daniels

Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: Comcast Is Turning The US Into Its Own Private Hotspot | TechCrunch

On Wed, 2014-06-11 at 17:47 +0000, Parks, Raymond wrote:
> Of course, you could pull off Marcus' idea by sniffing wifi traffic of
> real Comcast customers looking for that SSID, changing your server's
> MAC to match the Comcast customer, and then running Tor.

Seems likely a neighborhood where one person had Comcast would have
other people using Comcast too. The point is not to cheat a neighbor,
but to keep it ambiguous who is providing the anonymity services so that
if things turned ugly, everyone could be insulated from liability. Not
that things are that bad in the US, yet, but it doesn't seem so far
fetched it could get that way. (I could see randomizing the MACs every
so often wouldn't hurt.)

Marcus

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