back to article Hack slots hotspots into Windows 7

An unfinished project to fit Windows 7 with virtual Wi-Fi devices makes every laptop into a hotspot with the smallest of patches. The patch comes from Nomadio, who followed Microsoft's plans for virtual Wi-Fi support until Redmond dumped the project in 2006. Nomadio then noticed that most of the code is present in Windows 7, …

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  1. Ross 7

    Possible sec issue?

    Can't wait for the first worm/trojan to make use of that bit of code in its payload!

  2. Lawrence Dudley
    FAIL

    Mmmhh...

    You've been able to do this in OS X for years ;-)

  3. Geoff Mackenzie

    What I take from this is:

    When MS discontinue a work-in-progress feature, they leave whatever partially assembled cruft they have so far in the release.

  4. John Ridley 1

    charging for connections

    If I'm anywhere that I'm paying for a connection, I'm also going to reflect it out as an open hotspot for free. Now that all the hotels I stay at give wifi away, I don't have to carry a wireless router anymore to share the joy. It'd be cool to have the capability in my laptop so I could do it in the rare instance when I do come across a paid access point.

  5. Anonymous Hero
    Grenade

    @Lawrence Dudley

    "You've been able to do this in OS X for years ;-)"

    So...big deal...now it can be done on Windows. What's your point, where's the fail?

    Moron.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    Better late than never.

    See post icon thing

  7. Antony Riley
    FAIL

    Linux Fail.

    You've been able to do this in BSD with most hardware for years.

    Linux, haha, yeh right, the wireless stack is more of a mess than the audio stack.

  8. Mage Silver badge

    3rd party

    SW on NT and Linux has been able to do this since WiFi was released.

    Nothing to see.

  9. Stevie

    Bah!

    It's only cruft if the logic flow can reach it.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Pirate

    sweeet!

    i can now spoof the neighbours AP and knock them off the internet.

    saves using the jammer on them :D

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    direct linky if you wanna avoid the spam ;)

    http://connectify.me/a103dk/ConnectifyInstaller.exe

  12. Kevin 6
    WTF?

    Wait

    Wait wait wait you mean to tel me MS left in potentially exploitable code from something they tried years ago but removed every piece of code for classic start menu (or so they claim)... They royally got their priorities screwed up with this OS.

  13. da_fish27

    Huh?

    This has been possible not only on Linux, BSD, Mac OS X, but also on Windows XP+ (ad-hoc network).

    For this kind of usage I don't see any practical difference between having an ad-hoc and a central AP, but maybe I'm wrong, is there some?

    And if you really want a central AP, googling "software wifi router" gives some results...

    So, what's new about this? (Again, I could be wrong, please clarify if I am)

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So the point is?

    That a very veru few people will be able to do this? I can see the Microsoft logic and for once it's not that bad: why enable a feature that is going to be seldom used, can cause a storm of lawsuits due to privacy violations (the AP sees all the traffic), and some nice security holes?

  15. Malcolm Hall
    Go

    @Lawrence Dudley

    OS X can share an ethernet connection over the airport. This is about sharing a wifi connection over another wifi connection. E.g. multiple virtual wifi connections with different SSDIs. OS X cannot do this yet.

  16. John Klos

    This is newsworthy?

    These guys played you - they got you to publish this piece about that age-old practice of getting people to PAY for things in Windows which everyone else gets for free with every other OS.

    I would expect other sites to fall for this, but I am rather surprised that The Register would!

  17. Havin_it

    Old hat, are you sure?

    To those bleating that this has all been done before, care to share some sources? According to the site, it's able to be a client on one WLAN and act as Master/AP to other clients, all using the one wireless NIC. It doesn't use Ad-Hoc mode, they say. I've never heard of an app for Windows or Linux that can do this, and at the very least it's hardware-dependent.

    If anyone can point me to such a thing - especially for Linux - I'd be delighted.

  18. Disco-Legend-Zeke
    Paris Hilton

    The smaller the cell...

    ...the higher the bandwidth. The back of a laptop offers the antenna designer a nice stable platform for efficient beam forming, no power wasted in other directions when you MIMO-mesh up with your keyboard, mouse, earpiece, and hundreds of beam connections to other femto cells in the network.. This reusability of spectrum makes public bandwidth almost infinite.

    As i have ranted in the past, 802.11n presents us with the capability of creating a public, self forming, mesh network. The more people that join, the higher the overall bandwidth. Google gets this.

    The carriers don't.

    Paris because she consumes vast quantities of bandwidth.

  19. Paul2724
    Thumb Up

    This is cool tbh

    Turns my netbook with built in 3G into a mobile wifi hotspot - works well.

  20. sT0rNG b4R3 duRiD
    Stop

    This is exactly my problem with windows

    Who the heck knows exactly what the hell is in there?

  21. Winkypop Silver badge
    FAIL

    Count down to fail

    Oh this WILL be fun to watch...

  22. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    PAID wifi hotspots

    Seriously? Got some catching up to do with South America, I think...

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