I Am Being Teased By A Local WiFi HotSpot

Without giving too much away, my new laptop permanently finds a local 'commercial' hotspot - right down to - if I open browser, it goes straight to their webpage asking for l/p.
Last night I noticed for brief moments, I could get ftp access outward - although http still seemed blocked. Currently I'm looking at what is described by my pc as an 'unsecured wireless network'.. My laptop is technically 'offline' but is picking up a solid signal from this wi-fi hotspot..

They seem to be using something via 'patronsoft.com' for their access point, (how do I know? I can browse it

Dear Anne Landers - as a wi-fi n00b, I find this constant teasing of my poor offline laptop, to be highly irritating - what can I do to help it get online?

From what you're describing it sounds like the AP is giving you an IP via DHCP.

Secondly, what happens on the HTTP side is that you are hitting what is typically called a "walled garden". Meaning any HTTP access or DNS lookups will always end up at the same "portal", ie the bit where they ask for your login/password.

If the ftp was open-ish, it sounds like patronsoft is a bit dodgy in it's walled garden techniques.

Unfortunately, there's really not much you can do. The ap will only drop the walls around your garden, when you've purchased some time, or a token, or have a U/P. Until such time normal hotspot software will remember your MAC address, and the IP it gave out, and keep it walled.

Of course, if you were sniffing the airwaves you could probably see someone else logging in, via the HTTP interface, and you could steal their IP address from them. But that's only if you're close enough to see other people logging on to the AP.

aah, that might explain the occasional 'new' network that pops up -and which I think I may have piggybacked on, in order to get the brief ftp connection - so AP is secure, but customer X using it, isnt. Curses. I guess I have to quietly sit and wait like a digital vulture in a nearby digital tree for those dumb customers

sniff

have you tried using the auditor boot cd http://new.remote-exploit.org/index.php/Auditor_main just leave the notebook on and "looking" for the "details" required to access "secure" access point.