Airpass – Easily overcome WiFi time limits

https://airpass.tiagoalves.me/

by herbertl • 1 year ago

390 263 1 year ago

airpass.tiagoalves.me

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• 1 year ago

I wonder how it detected it. Perhaps the randomly-generated ones are mostly in invalid/unassigned MAC space?

jasongill• 1 year ago

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

classichasclass• 1 year ago

Alternatively, if you don't want to run the whole Electron app, the money is this line:

  sudo.exec("/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport en0 -z && ifconfig en0 ether `openssl rand -hex 6 | sed 's/\(..\)/\1:/g; s/.$//'`",

rafram7• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

People forget to think about Swift let alone tools like Platypus.

encom• 1 year ago

Because that's all anyone knows, and PC development is dead.

content-length: 47262814

Sigh...

SR2Z• 1 year ago

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.

jeroenhd• 1 year ago

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.

palata• 1 year ago

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.

thisislife22• 1 year ago

It doesn't need to be - on macOS, it could even just as well have been a simple Xbar Plug-In! ( https://xbarapp.com/ ).

gopher_space2• 1 year ago

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.

k4rli• 1 year ago

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.

Alifatisk• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

What exactly is that doing? Is there some backend limitation for WiFi interfaces that making it think it’s Ethernet is faster?

sodality22• 1 year ago

It just resets the MAC address, making the router believe it's a new device, thus not subject to the "x minute" free WiFi.

paxys3• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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 × 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.

righthand4• 1 year ago

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.

mistercow2• 1 year ago

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.

lxgr2• 1 year ago

Wow, they optimized the minimal Electron app down to 47 MB?

CommenterPerson• 1 year ago

Are they doing something additional with the 47MB - 200 bytes? Like selling you to the brokers?

ryandrake• 1 year ago

I so strongly wish more developers gave even a single shit about this. The current state of desktop app development is truly an embarrassment.

dbalatero• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

Those who don't learn /usr/bin are destined to reinvent it, poorly.

unixhero• 1 year ago

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

kzrdude• 1 year ago

And notice the other abstraction too.

This is not 'an app to change MAC address' but an app to 'overcome WiFi time limits'.

ncr100• 1 year ago

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.

PaulHoule4• 1 year ago

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.

runlaszlorun2• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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.

leshenka• 1 year ago

Apple’s Siri Shortcuts. No programming. No dependencies.

cozzyd• 1 year ago

the hilarious thing is it shells out for the random mac...

tommoor• 1 year ago

Nice, added it as a bash alias.

    alias randommac='sudo /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport en0 -z && sudo ifconfig en0 ether $(openssl rand -hex 6 | sed "s/../&:/g; s/:$//")'

commandersaki2• 1 year ago

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.

101008• 1 year ago

Wow. Don't you need to pay a Apple license as well to distribute apps in Macs?

tengwar23• 1 year ago

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.

preciousoo2• 1 year ago

Is this possible on mobile (read iPhone) devices without root?

scarface_743• 1 year ago

Settings -> WiFi -> choose your WiFi network -> private WiFi address -> set to “rotating”

It will change every time you disconnect/connect

MattSayar• 1 year ago

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-• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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-chisel2• 1 year ago

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.

userbinator3• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

Nice little helper friend

kazinator2• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

GrapheneOS has per-connection (as an alternative to per-network) randomization which is enabled by default

jck• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

you have both options in ios/macos, fixed random mac per ssid, and rotating

rahimnathwani2• 1 year ago

  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• 1 year ago

Could you describe how? Quick searching doesn't show it to be "straightforward" as far as I can find.

tengwar23• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

How does that work with MAC address conflicts and clashes? I naively thought every MAC address had to be unique.

diggan• 1 year ago

There are like 50 trillion possible addresses, unlikely to clash in one network :)

BobbyTables24• 1 year ago

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.

ammar2• 1 year ago

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...

bapak2• 1 year ago

I think the rotating address is limited to 3, right? The script here generates one at random.

km3r• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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!

lxgr2• 1 year ago

Per [1], this only works once per 24 hours on new iOS/macOS versions, and only once per two weeks on older ones though.

userbinator3• 1 year ago

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.

glerk2• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

That’ll buy you one new turn of the crank; you’ll need to change numbers once every expiration period.

glerk2• 1 year ago

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_clone2• 1 year ago

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-chisel2• 1 year ago

“Randomness” and “one less thing for me to think about”

crustycoder• 1 year ago

On android it can be toggled on If Developer Options are enabled.

o_____________o• 1 year ago

Alternatively for Mac,

https://github.com/halo/LinkLiar

visiondude• 1 year ago

^ seems like the way to go. open source and more features.

mannyv2• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

I tired this once and it bypassed the captive portal and time limits entirely

varenc• 1 year ago

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"

mannyv2• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

On Linux you can use `macchanger` to change your MAC address from the terminal.

purplehat_• 1 year ago

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.

righthand4• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

I used to use this little macOS script at coffee shops.

https://gist.github.com/nixpulvis/d83c0ae70a4c3a06797b

deadbabe• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

In reality it’s mostly VC/Big Tech news. Hacker ethos isn’t something we see much of around here.

gsibble3• 1 year ago

Agreed.

vachina2• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

How was the auth done? And for that matter what logic did the traffic shaping use?

vachina2• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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?

mcshicks2• 1 year ago

I think the name refers to the limits some airlines have. JAL for instance offers one hour free on some flights.

andy99• 1 year ago

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.

josu• 1 year ago

Airplanes. Some airlines offer 30 minutes of free wifi or something.

seemaze• 1 year ago

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_743• 1 year ago

Virgin Atlantic lets you have 20 minutes of WiFi free and then you can pay for the flight or for an hour.

mr_mitm• 1 year ago

Besides airplanes mentioned in the other comments, this is also common in airports. Zürich Airport gives you four hours for free.

Stuttgart Airport has 60 minutes.

caioluders• 1 year ago

Some python that clones other people mac + random https://github.com/caioluders/mac_auto_cloner

lrvick• 1 year ago

Solved problem on linux for decades:

https://gothub.dev.projectsegfau.lt/alobbs/macchanger

rafram7• 1 year ago

Yes it’s not like this is the first tool to do this on macOS; e.g., https://github.com/acrogenesis/macchanger

ClawsOnPaws• 1 year ago

Since this is only available for mac, couldn't this fairly easily be solved with shortcuts?

johnebgd• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

Fantastic. Now we're promoting script kiddies scamming airlines. That's a new low for hn

phyzome2• 1 year ago

Those poor airlines!

Beijinger• 1 year ago

Like macchanger under Linux since 20 years? Must be cool to have an Apple I guess.

tptacek• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

Can you tell us more about it? I am so curious!

(Edit: punctuation)

gsibble3• 1 year ago

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.

gsibble3• 1 year ago

If this site was really hackers, this wouldn't be considered news.

neilv• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

tried that in a hotel in Paris and it worked

WJW4• 1 year ago

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?

rafram7• 1 year ago

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.

bongodongobob3• 1 year ago

Yeah. I think any network with STP/anti-flapping enabled will shut that down pretty quickly though.

delfugal• 1 year ago

AirPass? I had that wrong. Maybe because I just had lunch.

Airpass – Easily overcome WiFi time limits

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