This article points out just about the craziest thing I have seen about Microsoft Windows. I know that Microsoft in
Read the linked article if you're really interested in the details, but basically Windows XP and friends are designed to pretend to be certain kinds of WiFi networks that you might have connected to in the past (a so-called AdHoc or peer-to-peer WiFi network). AdHoc networks aren't that common, but the point is that if you ever tried to connect to one with your WinXP laptop, later on it will broadcast to the world that it is that network.
Then other laptops will see that network, and some will try to connect, and they are then "infected" with this broadcasting "virus." It's not a traditional computer virus of course, just a set of behaviors that spread virally. The most widely spread early names will continue to spread even more because of the nature of this system. Ever see a network called "Free Public WiFi" but when you connect, it didn't work? Congratulations, you are now part of the problem....
This isn't a bug -- it was designed to work that way. Dumb. Now folks with WiFi enabled laptops -- nearly everyone -- try to connect to "Free Public WiFi" and it doesn't work. They are not only spreading the behavior virus, but are convincing themselves and others that public WiFi must be rife with evil people setting up nasty WiFi access points to infect computers with a real virus, and they have just been duped. They tell others "don't connect to open public WiFi networks." Fear of public WiFi spreads, and so it becomes less used and hence less valued and so less valuable, and then goes away.
general and Windows in particular gets a lot of grief for being evil or stupid or may evil-stupid or whatever. Some of the criticism is surely warranted, but a lot isn't. But hey, everyone likes to pick on the 800 pound gorilla. Just when I start to think a bit more positively of Microsoft, I find out about their amazingly bone-headed WiFi design.
Read the linked article if you're really interested in the details, but basically Windows XP and friends are designed to pretend to be certain kinds of WiFi networks that you might have connected to in the past (a so-called AdHoc or peer-to-peer WiFi network). AdHoc networks aren't that common, but the point is that if you ever tried to connect to one with your WinXP laptop, later on it will broadcast to the world that it is that network.
Then other laptops will see that network, and some will try to connect, and they are then "infected" with this broadcasting "virus." It's not a traditional computer virus of course, just a set of behaviors that spread virally. The most widely spread early names will continue to spread even more because of the nature of this system. Ever see a network called "Free Public WiFi" but when you connect, it didn't work? Congratulations, you are now part of the problem....
This isn't a bug -- it was designed to work that way. Dumb. Now folks with WiFi enabled laptops -- nearly everyone -- try to connect to "Free Public WiFi" and it doesn't work. They are not only spreading the behavior virus, but are convincing themselves and others that public WiFi must be rife with evil people setting up nasty WiFi access points to infect computers with a real virus, and they have just been duped. They tell others "don't connect to open public WiFi networks." Fear of public WiFi spreads, and so it becomes less used and hence less valued and so less valuable, and then goes away.
Actually, I named my secured home network "Free Wireless Internet" just to mess with the neighbors.
So, does that mean that Microsoft actively discourages open Wi-Fi?
This isn't the case since SP2 for XP. You have to attach to any network the first time. Old news.
Remember how programmers think. They'd set it up to discourage behaviour that might compromise security, valuing not bestowing upon some future programmer more work than he already has in the form of chasing viruses on your computer because you used an unsafe system like public wifi.
I realize that was a long sentence, but that's how programmers think.
re:Daiv -- That's good to hear, and I hope it is correct. I still see a *lot* of these out there -- are those all XP SP1 or earlier?
You are incorrect. A cursory test bears me out.
I can't believe I'm defending MS, but...
2 XP SP 2 laptops with all network preferences deleted (cards removed in device manager, machine rebooted, cards redetected, networks redetected) behave as follows:
1. With machine A as an ad-hoc network, machine B sees it but does not autoconnect.
2. After being forced manually to connect to A, machine B stores a profile for A's adhoc network and will reconnect when it sees A broadcast.
3. If A is shutdown, and then "brainwashed" becoming new laptop C, at no point does the new C see B broadcasting as the adhoc network A was. I sniffed packets and monitored network connections/discovery in the event log for 10 hours. C never sees B pretend to be A. The machines don't see each other at all, because they're both in client/discovery mode. Also, the default SSID for a new adhoc network is not "Free Public WiFi." There is no default. You get a text box to enter your own, and it's required.
Re: Derik S.- I'm very happy to be wrong about this -- it was insane to begin with, and according to a commenter above, was fixed in SP2.
One note -- I don't say that "Free Public WiFi" is the default that Windows created -- just that it happened to be one of the early SSID's that got propagated by the viral nature of the design.
It's amazing how spread this is -- I found the SSID in Argentina, and the only reason I didn't bring it back to Brazil is that I have a Mac.
The original blogger is VERY confused. Well, maybe not *very* confused, but confused nonetheless.
He's doing well until the "the problem is at stage #4" part.
He makes the mistake of saying that *infrastructure* SSIDs will somehow magically be auto-trans-mutated into *ad-hoc* SSIDs by the zero networking client. THAT DOES NOT HAPPEN, full stop!
It never DID happen, it never DOES happen, and in all likelyhood never WILL happen!
Will winblows configure itself as the first node on an *ad-hoc* network that it has previously attached to if it finds absolutely nothing else around? YES.
Will winblows take a previously configured *infrastructure* WLAN and somehow magically convert it to an ad-hoc network and make itself the first node? ABSOLUTELY NOT.
So, sorry to burst the original idiot blogger's bubble, but everyone's infrastructure SSIDs are not going being virally spread. (We'd have heard about it wayyyyyyyyy before now!) What the original blogger is seeing is someone who connected to an AD-HOC "free wireless wi-fi" network, and that started repeating itself.
There's a WORLD of difference between the two.