[HN Gopher] Airpass - Easily overcome WiFi time limits
___________________________________________________________________
Airpass - Easily overcome WiFi time limits
Author : herbertl
Score : 370 points
Date : 2025-06-18 15:29 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (airpass.tiagoalves.me)
(TXT) w3m dump (airpass.tiagoalves.me)
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| Doesn't Mac already have this with rotating MAC addresses? I also
| ran into an access point that detected this and required me to
| turn it off to continue.
| myself248 wrote:
| I wonder how it detected it. Perhaps the randomly-generated
| ones are mostly in invalid/unassigned MAC space?
| jasongill wrote:
| There is a "local bit" in MAC addresses per RFC 7042, so MAC
| addresses that have their second character as E, A, 2 or 6
| are "local" which effectively means "randomly selected by
| software". So my current macOS selected MAC address of
| 16:6a:d2:20:e6:eb is "local" due to the second digit in the
| address being 6
| boston_clone wrote:
| I had no idea about this; generally i thought it was done
| by OUI like the GP suggested - they have a small cached
| table of valid OUIs and warn on prefixes not in that
| subset. Thanks for sharing!
| bapak wrote:
| Oof, I wonder if this is the reason why I constantly have
| issues with my M1 Mac connecting to cafe hotspots.
| Regularly I find places that let me connect and then kick
| me off less than a minute later.
| classichasclass wrote:
| Alternatively, if you don't want to run the whole Electron app,
| the money is this line: sudo.exec("/System/Librar
| y/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resourc
| es/airport en0 -z && ifconfig en0 ether `openssl rand -hex 6 |
| sed 's/\(..\)/\1:/g; s/.$//'`",
| rafram wrote:
| Why does a Mac-only app that shows a menu bar icon and a
| notification popup need to be Electron...? That's 30 lines of
| Swift, max.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| 1) the dev only had a hammer and he nailed the screw in
|
| 2) the dev has 64gigs of ram and a newest CPU and doesn't
| care about performance issues for people on older
| computers... that's why you need gigs of ram just to read a
| weather report online.
| outofpaper wrote:
| People forget to think about Swift let alone tools like
| Platypus.
| encom wrote:
| Because that's all anyone knows, and PC development is dead.
|
| >content-length: 47262814
|
| Sigh...
| SR2Z wrote:
| If you want a frontend for you app, you probably just use
| Electron and get it over with in a few minutes instead of
| digging through the docs for Qt or some other framework.
|
| Is it worth it? Probably not, since this is a single-platform
| app to start with, but JS+HTML are easy to theme and
| customize, and Qt is... not quite as simple.
| juancroldan wrote:
| Now that you can build such an app with AI in under 20
| minutes with a manageable codebase you can properly
| understand and control, I don't think that's a good excuse
| anymore
| paxys wrote:
| > with a manageable codebase you can properly understand
| and control
|
| Yeah, that definitely describes every AI codebase I have
| seen..
| whatevaa wrote:
| If you don't know the language, how can you properly
| understand and control it?
| therein wrote:
| In 2025 you unfortunately just vibe with the code
| nowadays.
| rafram wrote:
| Where did you get Qt from? This is, again, a Mac-only app
| that doesn't even have any windows. It's just a menu bar
| icon and a notification. That's incredibly simple to build
| with plain old Cocoa and Swift.
| anthk wrote:
| Or AppleScript maybe.
| righthand wrote:
| No one has to dig through electron docs though right? There
| is nothing simple about an electron app regardless how
| little logic you personally programmed on top of it.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| If you don't know Swift, but do know Electron, it's easier to
| do it in 30 lines of Javascript.
|
| People who don't like the developers work can always write
| and publish their own application, of course.
| whatevaa wrote:
| It's hard work writing free stuff for others, much easier
| to criticise stuff instead of getting your hands dirty.
| pwdisswordfishz wrote:
| It's hard work learning programming tools and optimizing,
| much easier to use a one-size-fits all framework that
| wastes the end-user's resources.
| chipsrafferty wrote:
| What's the incentive to spend a lot of time to optimize
| for something you're giving away for free?
| steviedotboston wrote:
| I just asked ChatGPT to write a Swift program to renew MAC
| addresses with a menu bar icon and it had no problem with
| it. Just over 50 lines.
| palata wrote:
| Electron is an overkill way to not have to learn how to do
| stuff properly, if you ask me. And people love not to learn.
| WJW wrote:
| Send in a PR then?
| ipaddr wrote:
| A pr that deletes the repo and bans the person from
| github?
| WJW wrote:
| No a PR that actually makes the world a better place. Be
| the change you want to see and all that.
| pwdisswordfishz wrote:
| By deleting the repo and banning the person from GitHub?
| thisislife2 wrote:
| It doesn't need to be - on macOS, it could even just as well
| have been a simple Xbar Plug-In! ( https://xbarapp.com/ ).
| rafram wrote:
| Or Alfred script, Raycast plugin, Shortcuts shortcut, shell
| alias, and the list goes on. There are a lot of decent
| options; "50+ MB Electron app" is, in my opinion, not one.
| gopher_space wrote:
| Is ActionScript still a thing on Macs? I feel like that tech
| was almost criminally overlooked while being the backbone for
| a lot of processing pipelines back in the day.
| mattl wrote:
| You mean AppleScript?
| rafram wrote:
| It (AppleScript) is, and you can actually write JS instead
| these days, with a criminally underdocumented Objective-C
| bridge (JXA).
| gopher_space wrote:
| Ahh thanks! Went down a brief rabbit hole with JXA and
| had forgotten how opaque Apple is when you're developing
| for them.
| latexr wrote:
| > with a criminally underdocumented Objective-C bridge
|
| The documentation is the Objective-C docs, I use those
| all the time. You do need to understand the basics of how
| to translate from the Objective-C APIs to what JXA (or
| AppleScript) expects, but once it clicks you can do it
| for essentially anything with the same logic.
| al_borland wrote:
| I was preparing for the death of AppleScript and was
| shocked when I stumbled around their addition of JS a few
| years back. I thought that would have been big enough
| news to hit my radar when it happened, or that Apple
| would have made a big deal about it at WWDC. Of course,
| that would require them to fully support AppleScript in
| their newer apps, while instead they seem to really only
| care about Shortcuts, since that's easier to sell on
| mobile, I assume.
| k4rli wrote:
| Looks like ai-generated bloat. It even has deps for deb+rpm
| builds yet is mac only.
|
| Honestly would not expect anything more from js devs who use
| macs/windows. I see this so often.
| JimDabell wrote:
| I've asked AI to build macOS menu bar apps and it's
| generated perfectly reasonable Swift, nothing like this.
| eddd-ddde wrote:
| Those deps are just electron's boilerplate. If you create
| any new electron app from a starter that's likely what you
| get.
| Alifatisk wrote:
| I feel like using Electron for such a little thing is way
| overkill. The newer laptops are very powerful so I don't think
| anyone would have any performance issues, but on older
| macbooks, having too many little Electron apps running in the
| background makes the fan go brrrrrrrr
| hk1337 wrote:
| What exactly is that doing? Is there some backend limitation
| for WiFi interfaces that making it think it's Ethernet is
| faster?
| sodality2 wrote:
| It just resets the MAC address, making the router believe
| it's a new device, thus not subject to the "x minute" free
| WiFi.
| dizhn wrote:
| That won't circumvent the sms code requirement most free
| wifi services use.
| catlifeonmars wrote:
| I have never seen this before
| popularonion wrote:
| Never seen it in the US, but it was fairly common when I
| was on vacation in Europe
| lavezzi wrote:
| Maybe you haven't flown recently then, even T-Mobile has
| introduced message based verification for trying to use
| their free in-flight WiFi now.
| dizhn wrote:
| There's at least one country with laws that say you have
| to keep track of national ID numbers (and times) if you
| want to provide wifi service.
| rafram wrote:
| It's required by law in some countries, and it leads to
| some very funny chicken-and-egg situations with airport
| WiFi.
|
| Istanbul Airport added a workaround: a physical passport
| scanner that stores your info and generates a code as an
| alternative to SMS verification. The whole thing just
| feels like a VPN ad.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| I've only seen it once.
|
| I was doing some work in a small-ish county
| jail/sheriff's office in the States. As part of that
| work, I needed some Internet access.
|
| Because jail (thick, reinforced walls and lots of steel)
| the cell phone coverage was basically shit -- otherwise
| I'd have just used my phone like I would normally have
| done approximately anywhere else.
|
| It was a fun dance: Requesting access via wifi, getting
| sent a code via SMS, and then going outside, turning off
| wifi to establish an actually-working network connection,
| retrieving the code (yay Google Voice), and then going
| back inside, turning on wifi, entering the code, and
| actually using it.
|
| There was some other detail (perhaps relating to very
| short timeouts or re-registration issues or MAC
| randomization) at some stage of the operation that seemed
| extra-insulting, but my mind has forgotten whatever it
| was.
|
| I have no idea what this song and dance was intended to
| provide, prevent, or enforce.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| > I have no idea what this song and dance was intended to
| provide, prevent, or enforce.
|
| Describes far more corporate IT policy than it ought to.
| rs186 wrote:
| I think they are extremely rare, and I would rather just
| use my mobile data instead of giving them my phone
| number.
|
| Definitely does not happen on "free trials" on in-flight
| Wi-Fi for obvious reasons.
| dizhn wrote:
| A now deleted comment reminded me that this is mostly for
| in-flight wifi where it makes much more sense. Mostly no
| SMS there either.
| rixed wrote:
| Or the voucher obtained by scanning your boarding pass in
| some airports.
| chipsrafferty wrote:
| I've never seen "x minute free wifi". What countries is
| that common in?
| paxys wrote:
| 200 bytes for the business logic.
|
| 47MB for the UI & boilerplate around the business logic.
|
| I get that this may be the easiest way to develop and publish
| an application today, but it's sad that this is the direction
| we have taken in recent years.
| aeonik wrote:
| Modern app bloat in one analogy:
|
| Business logic size: ~20 bytes Total app size: ~47 MB =
| 47,000,000 bytes
|
| Bloat factor: 47,000,000 / 20 = 2,350,000
|
| Let's scale this up and say the business logic is 1 pound.
|
| Then the whole app would weigh: 1 lb x 2,350,000 = 2,350,000
| pounds
|
| What weighs ~2.35 million pounds? - A fully
| loaded Boeing 747-8: ~987,000 lbs - Another fully
| loaded 747-8: ~987,000 lbs - A blue whale: ~330,000
| lbs
|
| TOTAL: ~2,304,000 lbs
|
| The business logic is like shipping a 1 lb object (a book, a
| flash drive, whatever) by loading it into _two fully loaded
| 747s and strapping a blue whale on top._
|
| Just to run 20 bytes of logic.
| WD-42 wrote:
| This is a cool visualization, thanks.
| aquafox wrote:
| On a related note: Transporting a human in a car is (in
| relation to weight and size) like using a standard
| shopping cart to transport two 1L bottles of water. So
| the next time you walk through a pedestrian area, imagine
| everyone carrying a bag would use a shopping cart
| instead. That would be a huge traffic jam -- exactly like
| what you see on the road!
| WD-42 wrote:
| I've been pretty aware of this ever since I became a
| cyclist. I will ride down to the corner store to pick up
| a six pack and some chips, throw them in a backpack and
| ride back. It's easy. I see people driving their cars to
| do the same thing. All that weight and space for a 6
| bottles of beer. There is massive waste all around us.
| lostlogin wrote:
| There is also the time component. Off peak and with a
| decent sized backpack (change of clothes, laptop, food
| etc) it takes me the same time to go 6km as it does to
| drive it.
|
| At peak it's 1/4 to 1/3rd the time.
|
| Cars are slow around town.
| Zambyte wrote:
| The time component has to factor in both the traffic
| while driving, and the extra time required to find
| available parking. I bought an electric scooter a few
| weeks ago, and I have come to realize that my travel time
| is pretty much purely a function of distance. I just roll
| up past traffic if there is any, lock up on any bolted
| down object, do my business, unlock, and roll out.
|
| If anything, I feel like traveling at rush hour is
| actually strictly better for me. Cars being slow doesn't
| slow me down, but with the average speed being so much
| lower during rush hour, it seems like it makes it so if a
| driver hits me, it would be at a lower speed.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Those people could be driving from 20 minutes away or on
| their way home from work, or running other errands or
| picking kids up from school or any number of things. Good
| for you though.
| Zambyte wrote:
| Fortunately trains and buses exist.
| tengwar2 wrote:
| It's a reasonable solution, but let's not forget that
| simply walking is often at least as good a solution in
| many countries.
| ornornor wrote:
| Getting a trailer (burley cargo in this case, but applies
| more generally) has been a game changer. I can even bike
| to ikea and bring back flat packed furniture with it. Or
| do the weekly groceries. The trailer can carry up to
| 100lbs iirc (I have an e-bike)
|
| Short errands are much nicer with a bike: less effort
| than walking, much faster than walking, no parking
| headache at destination, cool breeze in your hair, and
| free (no gas, insurance, parking, tickets...)
| spiritplumber wrote:
| A long time ago in San Antonio TX I was pulled over by
| the cops while biking back to my little apartment with a
| bunch of groceries. They were unwilling to believe that
| an adult would leave the car home to get groceries by
| bicycle.
|
| (I'm from Italy originally).
| bjelkeman-again wrote:
| We experienced the same when we walked down the hill to
| go shopping in Laguna Niguel, CA. Stopped by cops for
| walking to the store. Nothing more happened.
| linker3000 wrote:
| Context: We're from the UK.
|
| My wife and I left a meeting in a business park in
| Phoenix and decided to walk the 5 mins to the local
| shopping mall, have a look around and then get a taxi
| back to the apartment in which we were staying (We'd
| taken a taxi to the meeting).
|
| We were about 2 minutes into our walk when a car pulled
| up and it was one of the people from the meeting. People
| in the office had spotted us walking and assumed there
| was some kind of emergency or our car had broken down.
|
| We had to be very politely insistent that we didn't need
| a lift to the mall and were perfectly fine.
| sheepscreek wrote:
| I like your username, and what happened to WD-41?
| d-lisp wrote:
| Incrementation ?
| WD-42 wrote:
| It wasn't the correct answer.
| sheepscreek wrote:
| What was the question?
| redundantly wrote:
| They're still working on that.
| latexr wrote:
| https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/42_(answer)
| sheepscreek wrote:
| Haha - but of course!
| paxcoder wrote:
| While I appreciate criticizing bloat (why are we packing
| Chromium in every app again?), I would like to warn against
| watching every "pound". Images, for example, "weigh" a lot
| more than code but that doesn't mean they don't serve a
| purpose and add value.
|
| That being said, the fact that quick maths can give you a 6
| orders of magnitude difference between functional code and
| the package is probably reason for concern.
| anon7000 wrote:
| Well, if you COULD ship something across the world on a
| private 747 with extra features to protect your cargo, and
| it has nearly no environmental downside and has no
| meaningful downside vs a smaller airplane... you'd probably
| do it! There's no incentive in software to get a smaller,
| more efficient plane, and plenty of incentive to use the
| big thing for free that has all the extra features
| dented42 wrote:
| That analogy doesn't really work here. Because there is a
| downside. It's slow, takes up a ton of memory, lots of
| disk space...
|
| When you have so many processes on a modern machine
| competing for resources, when every app chooses to be
| bloated and slow it really adds up.
| dtech wrote:
| That is more a tragedy of the commons thing. For each
| individual app the comparison holds true
| kulahan wrote:
| Tragedy of the commons or just a really bad industry?
| IgorPartola wrote:
| And since we do have app stores as gate keepers, this
| could easily be remedied by the app stores. They wouldn't
| even have to penalize you. Just put a score on there for
| app size (and app responsiveness) compared to the median
| in that category. Put this near the star rating from the
| reviews. Executives don't generally care that you as an
| engineer want to reduce an app size by 10% but they
| really really care about how the app looks on the app
| stores because that's what they show to people and what
| they are judged on.
| leptons wrote:
| It doesn't "take up a ton of memory" and if you think
| 47MB is "a lot of disk space" then maybe you need a
| bigger disk. Most laptops have at least 250GB, so this
| program would take up about 0.0188% of disk space, which
| is frankly not a lot. I had PDF files way larger than
| that. And you only need to run it once, you do not need
| to keep it loaded and running all the time, so it doesn't
| "take up a ton of memory".
| lostlogin wrote:
| This is how we have ended up with huge cars and huge
| houses etc. Storing huge volumes of unneeded junk isn't
| solved by have more space. Store less junk.
| leptons wrote:
| You can live however you want to live. I will live
| however I want to. 47MB is not worth worrying about, at
| all.
| anonymars wrote:
| These crappy WiFi portals are known for having ample
| download speeds too, right?
| BobbyTables2 wrote:
| 47MB is about 3x the space once required by a widely used
| commercial graphical operating system. It was even enough
| to also include Microsoft Word with plenty of space left.
|
| How far we've fallen.
| leptons wrote:
| You're living in the past. Hard drives are now up to
| 36TB. Hard drives are always getting bigger. 47MB isn't
| worth worrying about, at all.
| superb_dev wrote:
| Yup and those 36TB are cheap and common! Right?
| mlhpdx wrote:
| This is such a weird rationalization. You'd sell a kidney
| to be a 10x developer but making an app 1000000x smaller
| isn't worth a thought? Maybe that's why the former hasn't
| happened.
| leptons wrote:
| Where the hell do you get me saying I would sell a
| kidney? What are you smoking?? Weird? Your comment is the
| only weird thing here.
| wolpoli wrote:
| While it is true that hard drives have large amount of
| storage, it is unlikely that are any Mac with a 36TB hard
| drive attached that needs to overcome WiFi time limit.
| leptons wrote:
| Doesn't matter what size hard drive is in the mac. If you
| can't spare 47MB to solve a problem you're having with
| wifi access then you are doing it wrong.
| charcircuit wrote:
| 47 MiB only costs $0.0002. What has fallen is storage
| price.
| GTP wrote:
| > it has nearly no environmental downside and has no
| meaningful downside
|
| I think this is not the case. E.g., we replace our
| computers every few years, but not because the new ones
| can do things that you can't do with your current
| computer. It's because the software you use to do the
| same things keeps getting more resource-hungry.
| iknowstuff wrote:
| Its called externalized cost and its as real in software
| as it is IRL
| GTP wrote:
| So the cost _is_ there, it 's just not paid (directly) by
| the developer. But we all end up paying someone else's
| externalized cost, included said developer that is paying
| some other developers' externalized costs.
| josephg wrote:
| Yeah. I've been thinking of writing a blog post doing the
| math on that. If I spend $2000 on a computer, and that
| gets me a certain amount of ram and cpu and so on, we can
| figure out a dollar figure on that bloat.
|
| Then multiply by the number of people who use a piece of
| software (eg slack) and we'd get a figure for the
| externalised cost of a piece of software.
| jorvi wrote:
| Worst offender being Google, who toggled on VP8 / VP9
| decoding on YouTube despite the vast majority of devices
| only having h264 hardware decode.
|
| The aggregate waste in battery wear and watts spent is
| pretty staggering when you think about it, all so google
| could spend a few cents less per 100 streams.
| HappMacDonald wrote:
| Or they could just send the video uncompressed and then
| it would take even less hardware resources to decode on
| the client side. Why, in a sense it would be a lot more
| like decoding analog television signals at that point.
| (Not least of which since few clients would have the
| network bandwidth to handle more than 360-480p of that ;)
| antonkochubey wrote:
| VP9 is not more bandwidth efficient than H.264. You're
| thinking of AV1 here, which is only encoded by YouTube
| for VERY popular videos.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Consider also the missed market opportunity: my personal
| devices are 13yo laptop and 9yo phone. If an app isn't
| compatible or makes it lag, I delete it and download a
| competing one. I'm not alone, and yes: I have money to
| spend on your app. I just don't want/need to upgrade
| hardware that often.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > Well, if you COULD ship something across the world on a
| private 747 with extra features to protect your cargo
|
| Qatar might even give you a plane!
| BobbyTables2 wrote:
| People usually think that but when it comes to attack
| surface, change management, upgrade issues, etc --- the
| extra stuff isn't entirely free...
|
| Upgrades shouldn't ever break things, bugs and
| vulnerabilities never exist, and Rube-Goldberg machines
| should work 100% reliably day in and day out.
|
| Unfortunately reality doesn't work that way...
| al_borland wrote:
| Even Rube Goldberg sometimes included a simple
| alternative at the end of his machines. If the opossum or
| woodpecker get sick, there is a knife handy to sharpen
| the pencil.
|
| https://msl.cs.uiuc.edu/~lavalle/cs397/goldberg.html
| numpad0 wrote:
| This has to be Soviet Shoe Factory Principle in action,
| not just ignored negative externalities. Everyone relies
| on shipping more code for their employment, rather than
| more values, which incentivizes that behavior.
|
| 1: https://wiki.c2.com/?SovietShoeFactoryPrinciple
| phyzome wrote:
| I think you're conflating "no incentive" (which might be
| true) with "no downsides" (which is not).
| jofla_net wrote:
| says more about sociology, really.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| How many 747's can the average person fit on the 128GB+
| smartphone in their pocket?
| BobbyTables2 wrote:
| Excellent point!
|
| And to top it off, the dual flights and whale would need
| complex orchestration too!
|
| We just call it Kubernetes...
| foxglacier wrote:
| Human time is money in software, more analogous to mass in
| physical goods. So you should calculate the time savings
| for all the people using the app vs entering the code
| themselves.
|
| Mass is a nonsense analogy that doesn't reveal anything
| useful.
| tucnak wrote:
| The proposition that Electron apps are somehow "saving
| time" is preposterous!
|
| Of course, the real cost-saving is in labour--web
| development presents a radically lower barrier to entry
| compared to even non-native, cross-platform UI/UX
| platforms such as Qt, or Flutter, or what-have-you, let
| alone simply managing multiple native applications.
|
| So this is not a bill-of-materials kind of analogy, it's
| a statement about talent.
|
| Web leaders have grown complacent; at times, it seems
| they don't take things seriously. I mean, just take a
| look at something like SvelteKit. I'm not a web
| developer, however I happen to like Svelte a lot, but
| also despise SvelteKit equally as much.
|
| Every major release is like "fuck you."
| fwip wrote:
| Yes, the savings in labour translates to savings in time.
| This should be obvious.
|
| Using Electron to package your application often saves
| time over writing a native app.
|
| Giving a regular user a ready-to-use app saves them time,
| because they aren't googling "how to use terminal" for
| five minutes or trying to copy-paste the magic command
| out of their notepad app.
| _gruntled wrote:
| "every major release" lol you mean the single major
| release that has ever happened since GA?
| bognition wrote:
| This is an absurd way to think of this. Following this same
| train of thoughts for humans:
|
| The business logic for humans is a single reproductive
| cell.
|
| A single sperm weighs 2.3 x 10^-11 grams. If the average
| male weighs 75kg the. The bloat ratio for a human male is
| 3.2x10^15
|
| Getting back to the app there is huge value in not needing
| to run the command yourself. Sure it's wrapped in a UI that
| comes with "bloat" but honestly who cares. When was the
| last time someone needed to worry about hard drive space,
| when it comes to a 40mb file.
| m11a wrote:
| Well, the apps often come bundled with a bunch of other
| stuff. Automatic updates, background workers, telemetry
| ...
|
| All of which sucks up your compute resources and battery.
| Repeat for every such little utility app you have on your
| Mac. Some may implement that random stuff inefficiently
| (eg very frequent telemetry), which sucks even more. Some
| of it may even be wrong, vibe coded, or copy pasted.
|
| Personally, puts me off installing random utility apps,
| even if the single utility would be useful.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| In the human analogy, the human has to be the entire
| computer too. It's all functional, not much bloat. For
| the app, the computer is external. It really is bloat.
| BestHackerOnHN wrote:
| OMG you win HackerNews today with this comment! Super
| HackerNews!!!
| m3047 wrote:
| Very nice. Maybe that should be submitted to The Register
| for their units of measurement menagerie.
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| bravo, Douglas Adams would have been proud
| righthand wrote:
| It's not the easiest way just the most evangelized. A Qt app
| even would be a few lines of code, but we've done a good job
| scaring people that learning other languages is bad because
| we can't ship features fast enough with non-evangelized
| frameworks.
| anthk wrote:
| Even TCL/TK would be smaller.
| righthand wrote:
| Every framework under the sun gives you a `main()` func
| to call your program code. But if all you've ever used is
| blogs telling you how to hack together an electron app,
| you'd probably assume electron was the gold standard for
| simplicity sake but in reality is the gold standard for
| Google's sake (and whatever marketing company's).
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Yuck! Funny though I wrote a program for making red-cyan
| anaglyph stereograms using TkInter/Python. Stereograms
| work best when you can put important objects at the plane
| of the paper/screen and this is done by sliding the left
| and right images relative to each other.
|
| Tk has no color management, unlike newer frameworks,
| which was good in this case because I asked for (255,0,0)
| and got (255,0,0). When I exported to JPEG and views on a
| web browser though I got something like (186, 16, 16)
| because on my wide gamut monitor the native primaries are
| more saturated than sRGB primaries so some white gets
| blended in to make them less saturated. Turns out in
| Windows, screenshots are in _the color space of your
| monitor_! It's something you'd never notice unless you
| made stereograms because that little bit of green and
| blue goes to the wrong eye.
| mistercow wrote:
| I keep thinking that this could be solved by just building
| Electron into the OS as a shared framework so we don't have
| to have a separate copy for every app, but the more I dig
| into it, the more I realize I'm just reinventing the web
| browser.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Tauri: https://tauri.app/
| paxys wrote:
| You are describing PWAs, but they'll never have the same
| API access & permissions as a native app.
| mistercow wrote:
| Yeah, and I think it's worth asking why there. Why do we
| not just have a standard for PWAs with privileged OS
| access?
|
| There are two obvious answers. The first is portability.
| And sure, but Electron provides an answer here, so why
| can't we provide one with PWAs? We could even have OSes
| define this interface for different browsers to target in
| a standardized way. Yes, you need platform specific code,
| but that's often the situation with Electron too.
|
| The other answer is security. But how is Electron / any
| other installed app any better? Because we require more
| explicit consent before installing a "real" app than for
| installing a PWA? OK so, just let's just do that for PWAs
| too.
| thisislife2 wrote:
| There is something called the "WebView" in all the major
| platforms. The idea is that it allows you to use the
| browser engine only for creating the UI. But people
| complain its not "enough" because it is not the same on all
| the platform (it is if you use it just for UI), restricts
| access to some browser APIs (ignoring the fact that the OS
| often offers the same, even and more APIs) and Javascript
| (a crappy language for creating software applications).
| lxgr wrote:
| Wow, they optimized the minimal Electron app down to 47 MB?
| runlaszlorun wrote:
| Sadly this was also my reaction.
| CommenterPerson wrote:
| Are they doing something additional with the 47MB - 200
| bytes? Like selling you to the brokers?
| WJW wrote:
| Not even. It's just overhead.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I so strongly wish more developers gave even a single shit
| about this. The current state of desktop app development is
| truly an embarrassment.
| malnourish wrote:
| Who is embarrassed? What are the realized harms?
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Microsoft seems to have given up on guidance for how to
| write desktop apps, Windows 8 had that Metro thing that
| got rejected by the world. I guess you could use Win32,
| WinForms, WPF or something else. The incoherence is
| second only to the Linux world, I remember how developers
| were crazy about theming in Win32 in the '95 age so
| something like _Back Orifice_ or the app for your scanner
| looks atrocious. WPF added really great support for
| theming but at the point everybody was burned out in
| theming so it hardly ever got used.
| chuckadams wrote:
| Metro goes back to Windows XP Media Center, and frankly
| was one of the best UIs ever. Also used by the very
| underappreciated Zune (which was not helped by its drab
| hardware design or MS's PlayForSureWeMeanItThisTime DRM)
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I had a $99 Windows tablet that I thought was a great
| value and totally easy to use, but, like every other
| tablet I've had, I mostly used it to browse the web. Zune
| was pretty good but the only program that deserves the
| name "It plays for sure" is VLC.
| LauraMedia wrote:
| There is a deeper problem in this: The DX for native
| applications is too annoying, undocumented or hard for most
| people.
|
| I tried to build some of my tools without Electron, it's
| always a battle of multiple documentations for multiple
| systems and creating a bespoke system or having to deal
| with UI documentations that are glorified API references
| without examples.
|
| The last few tools I built used PhotinoNET, which gave me
| an electron-esque framework but not bundling it's own
| chromium, instead using the browser already on the system.
| And even that required a complicated build script so I can
| just export a simple flatpak, exe and dmg...
| dbalatero wrote:
| To be fair, the author didn't make this to impress people
| with byte optimizations, they probably just wanted to publish
| an app quickly that is useful, and was familiar enough with
| Electron or JS to do so.
| thwarted wrote:
| Those who don't learn /usr/bin are destined to reinvent it,
| poorly.
| tomrod wrote:
| What does this mean? I've always understood /usr/bin to be
| the storage dump for system binaries. Do you see or use it
| another way?
| GTP wrote:
| They likely mean that you already have in there all what
| is needed to change your laptop WiFi card's MAC address,
| without needing an additional application.
| unixhero wrote:
| Yes but you need a space station OS (Unix) to enjoy the
| terseness of 47-200 bytes of business logic.
|
| ps: I love both space stations and Unix
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| I guess, but the OS is a fixed cost that you already have
| amlib wrote:
| The solution to this problem requires you to interact with
| the OS, so a solution that requires tools found in the OS
| itself isn't a bad one. Its so simple you can have a script
| triggered by a desktop shortcut and be done with it.
|
| That all said, a simple GUI API provided by the OS for
| simple programs like this would be nice, just to give the
| user better feedback on the process. Is it done? Is it
| doing anything? Did it run correctly? Etc.. Zenity on linux
| kinda does that but is not guaranteed to be installed...
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Why do you need that in gui when you already have it in
| cli through pid?
| kzrdude wrote:
| And notice the other abstraction too.
|
| This is not 'an app to change MAC address' but an app to
| 'overcome WiFi time limits'.
| ncr100 wrote:
| Cough, AI Training Models, Cough
|
| There's great power in abstraction. Disagree?
|
| Your point is that an operating system, and its shell, all
| running on a machine, and a collection of apps, are somehow
| smaller than a wrapper application.
|
| I'm curious the amount of bytes the entire stack, minus the
| chrome which is the complaint I believe, how many bytes that
| is. I would say probably a gig.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| A few years back I did an eval of ways to make cross platform
| apps, specifically to escape Electron, and came to the
| conclusion that 'they all suck' except maybe JavaFX.
|
| Thing is, most x-platform frameworks still require a big
| download. Java and Python runtimes are in the same ballpark
| as Electron.
| runlaszlorun wrote:
| And sadly my reaction to 47MB these days is "hey not bad"
| given that I see 6 or 700 MB apps not doing much .
| sli wrote:
| It just seems to me like _far less_ work to just write a real
| binary that execs this static command than it does to setup a
| whole Electron project.
| virtualritz wrote:
| And you could ask an LLM to whip up the Swift code or whatever
| to wrap this line into a Dock app etc., if you want that
| convenience.
| cozzyd wrote:
| the hilarious thing is it shells out for the random mac...
| tommoor wrote:
| Nice, added it as a bash alias. alias
| randommac='sudo /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.fr
| amework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport en0 -z && sudo
| ifconfig en0 ether $(openssl rand -hex 6 | sed "s/../&:/g;
| s/:$//")'
| commandersaki wrote:
| So I tried this out on macOS 26 and the `airport` command is
| no longer there.
|
| There is a `airportd.sb` file, which appears to be some
| permissions based thing in s-expression/LISP. Weird.
|
| Edit: Spun up a macOS 15 VM and I got this:
|
| _WARNING: The airport command line tool is deprecated and
| will be removed in a future release._ _For diagnosing Wi-Fi
| related issues, use the Wireless Diagnostics app or wdutil
| command line tool._
|
| I guess they weren't kidding.
| bc569a80a344f9c wrote:
| Looking around briefly, you can replace it with this:
|
| `networksetup -setairportpower en0 on && [... set MAC ...]
| && networksetup -setairportpower en0 off`
|
| I think it's pretty safe to assume that modern Macs will
| always have en0 as the WiFi adapter, but if you wanted, you
| could use `networksetup -listnetworkserviceorder` to find
| the associated device.
| JonathonW wrote:
| Modern Macs do not always have en0 as the WiFi adapter
| (it's en1 on current iMacs and on the Mac Studio; en0 is
| the ethernet jack).
|
| But you're unlikely to be taking one of the machines that
| has built-in ethernet to the airport or coffeeshop.
| bc569a80a344f9c wrote:
| Duh, also true on my Mac Mini. But yeah, "modern Mac
| laptops" probably makes the statement correct enough and
| still describes the entire set of targets.
| commandersaki wrote:
| So this doesn't work if your wifi nic is associated with
| an SSID. `airport -z` disassociates the SSID.
|
| Can't seem to find a CLI command to do the same in macOS
| 26, but I haven't looked too hard either.
| msdrigg wrote:
| Airport has been deprecated for a year or two. Here's an
| article talking about its deprecation and its relatively
| nonfunctional replacement: wdutil
| https://www.intuitibits.com/2024/03/14/goodbye-airport/
| 101008 wrote:
| Wow. Don't you need to pay a Apple license as well to
| distribute apps in Macs?
| tengwar2 wrote:
| Not for Mac. MacOS is an open garden: there is an app store;
| or you can install signed apps (requires Apple cooperation);
| or you can install unsigned applications. MacOS gives you a
| nudge to the app store (which has genuine advantages) and a
| much stronger nudge away from unsigned non-app-store apps,
| but it is still an open garden. iOS is closed garden, which
| makes some sense for the security guarantees it can give for
| financial applications.
| preciousoo wrote:
| Is this possible on mobile (read iPhone) devices without root?
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Settings -> WiFi -> choose your WiFi network -> private WiFi
| address -> set to "rotating"
|
| It will change every time you disconnect/connect
| MattSayar wrote:
| The best part is right after the money line: 'Please check ' +
| issues_url + ' for help.' where issues_url is a github.com
| link. How are you going to check GitHub if you can't connect to
| WiFi in the first place?
| greyface- wrote:
| This will generate a multicast MAC 50% of the time, which will
| usually work, but can theoretically cause problems if there's a
| multicast-aware Ethernet bridge in your path. Ideally, the LSB
| of the first octet should be fixed to 0 to indicate a unicast
| address.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_address#Unicast_vs._multic...
| nine_k wrote:
| Fine, Electron is a complete overkill for that.
|
| What would you use instead to build a macOS GUI program with
| comparable ease? SwiftUI? Python + Tk (using the ancient system
| Python)? Something like Red?
| avidiax wrote:
| I feel this would be more useful as a utility to manage your MAC
| addresses.
|
| That would let you, for example, clone a MAC address or IP
| address between your computer and a phone, and maybe
| automatically resolve contention.
|
| That way, you can split purchased WiFi (such as on a plane)
| between multiple devices.
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| That's only going to work on one device at a time. Don't think
| that your phone and laptop with identically MAC addresses are
| going to magically share the connection.
| userbinator wrote:
| _That way, you can split purchased WiFi (such as on a plane)
| between multiple devices._
|
| You need a router for that, which fortunately is built in to
| most phones and computers these days.
| ndgold wrote:
| Nice little helper friend
| kazinator wrote:
| This has been an option in Android network settings forever:
| randomize your MAC. I think it's enabled by default now? It's a
| basic privacy feature; you can be fingerprinted by your device's
| MAC.
| netsharc wrote:
| It's also in the Apple devices, you just have to "forget
| network" and reconnect for the device to tell the network of
| its new fake MAC address.
| NoahZuniga wrote:
| No, this setting randomizes your MAC address between networks,
| but you keep the same MAC for a specific network. So if you
| want the network to think you're a new user, you'll need to
| change this specific network MAC address, and this isn't a
| setting enabled by default (and oftentimes is not even a
| setting)
| khimaros wrote:
| GrapheneOS has per-connection (as an alternative to per-
| network) randomization which is enabled by default
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Android 11 or later allows the choice in Developer Options.
| jck wrote:
| Yep. Android does this by default, but each ssid gets a
| randomized MAC which persists. It is still straightforward to
| trigger a MAC change manually tho. It is useful for privacy but
| imo useless for the public wifi limits use case since they
| almost always require an OTP via SMS to log in.
| hhh wrote:
| you have both options in ios/macos, fixed random mac per
| ssid, and rotating
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| For devices running Android 11 or higher, users can enable
| non-persistent MAC randomization globally for all Wi-Fi
| networks (that have MAC randomization enabled) through the
| developer options screen. The option to enable non-persistent
| MAC randomization for all profiles is found at Settings >
| Developer Options > Wi-Fi non-persistent MAC randomization.
| matsemann wrote:
| Could you describe how? Quick searching doesn't show it to be
| "straightforward" as far as I can find.
| tengwar2 wrote:
| OTP via SMS: depends on the country. These days it's not very
| common in the UK. They often ask for an email address, but my
| experience is that most of the time they don't check it for
| validity.
| alt227 wrote:
| How does that work with MAC address conflicts and clashes? I
| naively thought every MAC address had to be unique.
| diggan wrote:
| There are like 50 trillion possible addresses, unlikely to
| clash in one network :)
| BobbyTables2 wrote:
| They must be unique in a LAN segment. And only the lower 3
| bytes in a MAC are "unique" as the upper 3 are the vendor ID
| and relatively fixed.
|
| In practice people put fewer than 256 devices on networks
| (class C), so they have less than 1/65536 possibility of
| complete failure. And far less because they have a mix of
| OUIs.
|
| But yeah, if you put a few hundred or thousand security
| cameras or other device from a single vendor, all on the same
| network, conflicts are certainly possible.
|
| MAC conflicts are also a bit nasty to troubleshoot, and less
| obvious than IP conflicts.
| kazinator wrote:
| If your configuration doesn't randomize the MAC, that
| doesn't guarantee you won't be involved in a conflict. It
| only guarantees that it will go more badly for you, since
| you will be waiting on the other device to change _their_
| MAC before you get working networking. Whereas if yours is
| randomized, you will probably be okay after one reconnect.
|
| MAC randomization does not have to constrain itself to the
| lower three bytes; you can randomize the OUI too.
|
| What does Android MAC randomization do with the OUI?
|
| According to this possible hallucination from Google Gemini
| 2.5 Flash, the OUI is partially randomized too:
|
| - Locally Administered Bit (U/L bit): This bit (the 2nd LSB
| of the first octet) is forced to '1'.
|
| - Unicast/Multicast Bit (I/G bit): The least significant
| bit (LSB) of the first octet is usually set to '0' to
| indicate a unicast address.
|
| - Remaining OUI bits (and the entire lower three bytes):
| All the other bits in the MAC address, including the
| remaining bits of the first octet, the entire second and
| third octets (which are part of the OUI), and the entire
| last three octets, are randomized.
|
| Me again:
|
| So if two bits are fixed, everyone in the randomized space
| is randomizing 46 bits, which contains 7.03E+13 addresses.
|
| Practically speaking, it seems that the only way you will
| ever see a clash arising from the above randomization
| strategy is if two devices are using the same very poorly
| seeded PRNG.
| ammar2 wrote:
| Glad this feature is built into most modern operating systems
| these days.
|
| For MacOS (Sequoia+) you can just forget the network and
| reconnect to get a new MAC address [1].
|
| Android's documentation for if it decides to generate a new
| address per connection is a little vague [2], but I'm guessing
| forgetting and reconnecting works as well, you may also need to
| flip the "Wi-Fi non-persistent MAC randomization" bit in
| developer settings.
|
| On Windows, flipping the "Random hardware address" switch seems
| to cause it to generate a new seed/address for me.
|
| [1] https://support.apple.com/en-euro/102509
|
| [2] https://source.android.com/docs/core/connect/wifi-mac-
| random...
| bapak wrote:
| I think the rotating address is limited to 3, right? The script
| here generates one at random.
| km3r wrote:
| Yeah I had to flip the developer setting toggle, but worked
| flawlessly for my flight (American Airlines has a watch an ad
| for 20 minutes of free internet that only works once per MAC)
| fendale wrote:
| Are you saying that on IOS 18 if you enable developer mode
| then each time you forgot the network it gets a new Mac? But
| without developer mode it does not get a new Mac each time
| you forget it? The Apple docs linked elsewhere in this thread
| suggest it only gets a new Mac once per 24 hours when you
| forget the network normally. I'm going on a long boat trip in
| the next week where this trick might work for me if so!
| lxgr wrote:
| Per [1], this only works once per 24 hours on new iOS/macOS
| versions, and only once per two weeks on older ones though.
| userbinator wrote:
| I have a generic Android phone from many years ago where the
| manufacturer didn't even bother to program the WiFi NVRAM, so
| every time you load and unload the driver, you get a new
| randomly generated MAC address. Interesting that that has
| become a feature these days.
| glerk wrote:
| Alternatively, disconnect from the wifi, use this command and
| reconnect:
|
| sudo ifconfig en0 ether 02:11:22:33:44:55
|
| Just ran into this on icelandair.
| pcl wrote:
| That'll buy you one new turn of the crank; you'll need to
| change numbers once every expiration period.
| glerk wrote:
| Pretty sure the electron app has the same limitation (popover
| notification says "join the network again for free wifi",
| besides you wouldn't be able to change the mac address if the
| network interface were actively in use)
| boston_clone wrote:
| Can you not manually set your MAC address in the network
| configuration portion of macOS settings anymore? Does this not
| accomplish that same task, just with an abstracted layer of
| "randomness" for address generation? Another commenter already
| de-bloated the entire application into a bash one-liner
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| "Randomness" and "one less thing for me to think about"
| crustycoder wrote:
| On android it can be toggled on If Developer Options are enabled.
| o_____________o wrote:
| Alternatively for Mac,
|
| https://github.com/halo/LinkLiar
| visiondude wrote:
| ^ seems like the way to go. open source and more features.
| mannyv wrote:
| If you really want to screw with these set your MAC address to
| 00:00:00:00:00:00
|
| It's an illegal address, but most equipment will take it because
| test devices occasionally come from the factory with that MAC.
| But higher level stuff might barf on it because it's technically
| illegal.
| totetsu wrote:
| I tired this once and it bypassed the captive portal and time
| limits entirely
| varenc wrote:
| alas, macOS refuses: $ sudo ifconfig en0
| ether 00:00:00:00:00:01 ifconfig: ioctl (SIOCAIFADDR):
| Can't assign requested address
|
| edit: but this worked on my external NIC! Network wasn't happy
| though and DHCP didn't work. Ubiquiti had a funny note about
| this MAC: " _Officially Xerox, but 0:0:0:0:0:0 is more common_
| "
| mannyv wrote:
| If you stash the IP/netmask/router IP you might be able to
| get it to work by setting a static IP on the connection with
| a 0 MAC address.
|
| As always, ymmv.
|
| On some equipment this may cause a broadcast storm, depending
| on how they implement things. Cisco equipment with some
| configs will send a packet to all the ports if it receives a
| packet and can't figure out where it's supposed to go.
| polivier wrote:
| On Linux you can use `macchanger` to change your MAC address from
| the terminal.
| purplehat_ wrote:
| Here's an equivalent little script for Debian Linux (but should
| work on most distros), based on classhasclass's comment:
| NEW_MAC=$(printf '02:%02x:%02x:%02x:%02x:%02x\n' $((RANDOM%256))
| $((RANDOM%256)) $((RANDOM%256)) $((RANDOM%256)) $((RANDOM%256)))
| sudo ip link set wlan0 down sudo ip link set wlan0
| address "$NEW_MAC" sudo ip link set wlan0 up
|
| You should replace `wlan0` with whatever you see in `ip link
| show` for your wireless interface, for me it is `wlp0s20f3`. I
| replaced the `openssl rand` command because it was generating
| some invalid MACs; this is hopefully only valid ones.
| righthand wrote:
| KDE Plasma has a "Random" button next to the MAC address field
| in the Network Manager UI. I'm on Debian Testing so not sure
| when it was added.
| netik wrote:
| The trivial defense against this is time limited passwords for
| Wifi access. Deny all access until a valid password is entered,
| only permit that password and MAC address pair for n minutes.
|
| Buy a coffee, get a new password, etc.
| pimlottc wrote:
| On a technical level it's trivial, but you're taking about
| having a shop replace their wifi router and/or update firmware,
| create some way for staff to see the current password and/or
| integrate with POS systems to print it on the receipt, update
| signage, etc. Hardly trivial for the average non-techie
| business owner.
| reaperducer wrote:
| So "trivial" that this is how it was done years ago, but then
| coffee shops gave up on it because it turned it not to be so
| trivial after all.
|
| Their employees' time is more effectively spent making coffee
| than repeatedly providing low-level tech support for random
| password problems.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| I used to use this little macOS script at coffee shops.
|
| https://gist.github.com/nixpulvis/d83c0ae70a4c3a06797b
| deadbabe wrote:
| This is so unethical and no one gives a fuck, society crumbles
| when people just feel entitled to take more than their fair
| share.
| chrisfosterelli wrote:
| This is hacker news. Hacker ethos is rooted in the intellectual
| challenge of overcoming software systems and electronic
| hardware. It's the same ethos that stole long distance phone
| minutes, traded warez, and got free satellite channels. You
| don't have to do those things but you probably won't convince
| those who do that their 20 extra minutes of wifi will be the
| downfall of society.
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| In reality it's mostly VC/Big Tech news. Hacker ethos isn't
| something we see much of around here.
| gsibble wrote:
| Agreed.
| vachina wrote:
| I used to strap 20 virtual eths to my Linux box because my dorm
| gave only like 512kbps per account, and then aggregated the 20
| interfaces.
| xrisk wrote:
| How was the auth done? And for that matter what logic did the
| traffic shaping use?
| vachina wrote:
| Auth is username/password over captive portal. You could pay
| for more bandwidth. The system was so pwned I ended up giving
| myself unlimited bandwidth.
| deanc wrote:
| A few years ago I saw a tip somewhere here on how to scan which
| MAC addresses are connected to nearby wifi and hijack their mac
| address and steal their internet connection.
| balls187 wrote:
| Haven't ever encountered any place that had a wifi time limit. In
| the late 2000's internet cafes had time limits but that was
| enforced on their own devices.
|
| Is there a specific scenario where time limited wifi is common
| place?
| mcshicks wrote:
| I think the name refers to the limits some airlines have. JAL
| for instance offers one hour free on some flights.
| andy99 wrote:
| I was trying to understand how this could be used for
| flights. I've seen either having to enter your last name and
| seat, or loyalty plan number to get in-flight wifi. Are there
| really airline wifis that give every mac address a free
| amount of time?
|
| A lot of airlines now offer free "messaging" - usually just
| text on common messaging apps like WhatsApp. I've been
| meaning for years to write some kind of server that could
| give me useful functionality over chat messages.
| mcshicks wrote:
| Pretty sure it will work on JAL at least right now. They
| just asked for an email. But it was also a new service so
| maybe to wanted people to try it. It occurred to me at the
| time that two devices with two emails should work for twice
| as long. For what I wanted to do on that flight, i.e. check
| and send a few messages the one free hour was fine. But
| yeah of course they could change it so that would not work.
| userbinator wrote:
| _I 've been meaning for years to write some kind of server
| that could give me useful functionality over chat
| messages._
|
| Already done:
|
| WhatsApp: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33568994
|
| Facebook Messenger:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9203946
|
| SMS(!): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8304409
| josu wrote:
| Airplanes. Some airlines offer 30 minutes of free wifi or
| something.
| seemaze wrote:
| I can't remember the last time I encountered this as an
| obstacle while flying. Don't you usually have to pay then log
| in from any device you choose?
|
| The bigger problem is how utterly useless and unstable the
| connection is to begin with..
| scarface_74 wrote:
| In the US, Delta and JetBlue offers everyone free WiFi.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Virgin Atlantic lets you have 20 minutes of WiFi free and then
| you can pay for the flight or for an hour.
| mr_mitm wrote:
| Besides airplanes mentioned in the other comments, this is also
| common in airports. Zurich Airport gives you four hours for
| free.
|
| Stuttgart Airport has 60 minutes.
| caioluders wrote:
| Some python that clones other people mac + random
| https://github.com/caioluders/mac_auto_cloner
| lrvick wrote:
| Solved problem on linux for decades:
|
| https://gothub.dev.projectsegfau.lt/alobbs/macchanger
| rafram wrote:
| Yes it's not like this is the first tool to do this on macOS;
| e.g., https://github.com/acrogenesis/macchanger
| ClawsOnPaws wrote:
| Since this is only available for mac, couldn't this fairly easily
| be solved with shortcuts?
| johnebgd wrote:
| Reminds me of Perfigo Smart Access before Cisco bought them.
| Network security with a MAC address whitelist. If you knew a
| whitelisted computer you'd have the same access it permitted.
| This was back before captive portal took off...
| satellite2 wrote:
| Fantastic. Now we're promoting script kiddies scamming airlines.
| That's a new low for hn
| phyzome wrote:
| Those poor airlines!
| Beijinger wrote:
| Like macchanger under Linux since 20 years? Must be cool to have
| an Apple I guess.
| tptacek wrote:
| Or you could just comply with the terms you tacitly agree to when
| using these services. Use this stuff or don't, but if you do, you
| don't get to complain about GPL infringement anymore.
| jmtulloss wrote:
| This is exactly how I managed to get my dorm room's internet
| turned off in college. My roommate was unimpressed with my
| cleverness.
| shlomo_z wrote:
| Can you tell us more about it? I am so curious!
|
| (Edit: punctuation)
| gsibble wrote:
| WOAH. MAC address spoofing is some old school stuff. I got in
| trouble for it in college.
|
| I didn't realize you could spoof MAC addresses on....well....a
| Mac but it's not something I'd do lightly.
| gsibble wrote:
| If this site was really hackers, this wouldn't be considered
| news.
| neilv wrote:
| This kind of thing can be a useful tool, including for
| privacy&security use cases that the page doesn't mention.
|
| But be conscious and thoughtful when using it. Some terms to
| consider whether they apply to a particular use include
| "unauthorized access", "circumvention", and "theft of service".
| josh_carterPDX wrote:
| This reminded me of an old app that would scan the MAC addresses
| of devices already connected to a paid WiFi network. You would
| then just change your MAC to one that already paid for the WiFi,
| and then reset it once you were done.
| bibelo wrote:
| tried that in a hotel in Paris and it worked
| WJW wrote:
| Wouldn't that lead to interference with the original device
| using that MAC address? Ie both of you getting packets meant
| for the other etc?
| rafram wrote:
| Yes. It's a bad (maybe even illegal?) thing to do. The victim
| device will start losing packets, and it'll look to them like
| the network is just unreliable. Eventually they give up and
| disconnect, and you take full control.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Yeah. I think any network with STP/anti-flapping enabled will
| shut that down pretty quickly though.
| delfugal wrote:
| AirPass? I had that wrong. Maybe because I just had lunch.
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