[liberationtech] How to get free wifi on public networks

Sun Feb 5 12:47:43 PST 2017

This short tutorial describes a few methods for gaining access to the
internet, a basic human right
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_Internet_access#2011:_UN_Special_Rapporteur_report>,
from public wireless networks.

This tutorial has been tested on Mac, should work on Linux, and hasn’t been
tested on Windows.
Preparation

Make sure you do this step *before* you are stuck without Internet access.

   1. Install Python pip <https://pip.pypa.io/en/stable/installing/>.
   2. Make a copy of this repository
   <https://github.com/kylemcdonald/FreeWifi> and install dependencies for
   the script we will be using:

git clone https://github.com/kylemcdonald/FreeWifi
cd FreeWifi && pip install -r requirements.txt

How to get additional time

If you had free internet access but your time has run out, the first thing
to try is open an incognito/private window. Here are instructions for a few
browsers:

   - Chrome
   <https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95464?source=gsearch&hl=en>
(mobile
   and desktop)
   - Safari for iOS <https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203036>
   - Safari for Mac <https://support.apple.com/kb/ph21413?locale=en_US>
   - Microsoft Edge
   <https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/instantanswers/34b9a3a6-68bc-510b-2a9e-833107495ee5/browse-inprivate-in-microsoft-edge>

An incognito/private window will temporarily clear any cookies that may
have been used for tracking how much time you spent online, making you look
like a “new user” and allowing you to log into the wireless portal again.

Unfortunately, most systems track MAC addresses instead of cookies. A MAC
address is a unique identifier assigned to every network interface. This
means you need to get a new MAC address to get additional time.
Fortunately, MAC addresses can be changed in software, without swapping the
hardware. The spoof-mac command line utility makes this easy by entering sudo
spoof-mac randomize Wi-Fi. If the command fails to run, try entering spoof-mac
list --wifi to check what the name of your wireless device is first, and
use that manually. After randomizing your MAC, try logging into the
wireless portal again. When you're done using the Internet, run sudo
spoof-mac reset Wi-Fi to reset your MAC address.

Note that MAC address spoofing may be interpreted as an illegal activity
depending on why you do it. In some cases it is certainly not illegal:
recent mobile operating systems like iOS 8+ and Android 6+ automatically
randomize their MAC address when searching for wireless networks to avoid
being tracked. But when Aaron Swartz liberated JSTOR
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_spoofing#Controversy>, MAC address
spoofing was claimed as a signal of intention to commit a crime.
How to get free access

If the network is open, but you can’t get access for some reason, you can
also try spoofing the MAC address of a device that is already using the
network. To the router, your device and the other device will look like one
device. This can cause some minor problems if they interrupt each other,
but for light browsing it usually works out fine.

To find the MAC addresses of other devices using the network, first you
need to connect to the network. You don’t need to have Internet access,
just a connection. First, on Mac OS run the command sudo chmod o+r
/dev/bpf*once
to make sure you can sniff wireless data (you need to do this again if you
restart your computer).

Then in your terminal, run the command python wifi-users.py. You should see
a progress bar immediately:

SSID: nonoinflight
Gateway: 00:e0:4b:22:96:d9
100%|██████████████████████████| 1000/1000 [00:46<00:00, 21.46it/s]
Total of 5 user(s):
27:35:96:a8:66:7f   6359 bytes
36:fe:83:9c:35:eb   9605 bytes
65:01:3c:cc:20:e8   17306 bytes
8c:6f:11:2c:f0:ee   20515 bytes
0a:4f:b2:b8:e8:56   71541 bytes

If there isn’t much traffic on the network, it might take longer. If it’s
taking too long, type CTRL-C to cancel the sniffing and print whatever
results are available. Finally, we want to spoof one of these MAC
addresses. For example, in this case we would enter sudo spoof-mac set
0a:4f:b2:b8:e8:56 Wi-Fi to try spoofing the address with the most traffic
(they probably have a connection).

After running this command, try to access the Internet. If you don't have a
connection, try the next MAC in the list. If your Internet connection drops
out while using this MAC address, try disconnecting and reconnecting to the
wireless network. Note that the original user of the MAC you copied may
experience these same connection drop outs if you are both actively using
the network.
How it works

wifi-users.py uses tcpdump to collect wireless packets. Then we look
through these packets for any hints of the MAC address (BSSID) of our
wireless network. Finally, we look for data packets that mention a user's
MAC as well as the network BSSID (or the network gateway), and take note of
that MAC using some amount of data. Then we sort the user's MACs by the
total amount of data and print them out.

Instead of sniffing wireless traffic, in some situations you can also use
the command arp -a to get a list of MAC addresses of devices on the
wireless network. Then you can either use spoof-mac to copy the address, or
use ifconfig directly on Linux and OSX. For the specifics of using ifconfiglook
at the implementations of set_interface_mac inside SpoofMac's interfaces.py
<https://github.com/feross/SpoofMAC/blob/master/spoofmac/interface.py>.

https://medium.freecodecamp.com/free-wifi-on-public-networks-daf716cebc80#.xwlr0udtr
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