Looks like I'm finally nearing the end. And this is despite writing about a short getaway. Looks like I need to somehow optimize my note-writing, and post only the most interesting stuff for you, otherwise you'll stop reading. I mean, I write for myself mostly, but sometimes, just like avva, I get writer's block, and it comes out like this:
In my head there's bedlam and noise.
What to write about - I don't know,
But I'll write anyway...
So, on Saturday evening rk13 and I were hacking my cultist router from FON.
For those out of the loop, I'll explain what it is. Strangely enough, it's always hard to explain. I don't know why: either I'm bad at it, or people just aren't interested, or the concept itself isn't as simple as I see it. In any case, I'll try again.
1. You register on the website fon.com (link in Russian)
2. You buy a special device – a La Fonera wireless router. It's a thing you can connect to via a wireless network, aka Wi-Fi.
3. You connect it to the internet at home with a cable.
The result will be (simply put):
4. Strangers will be able to connect to your router via Wi-Fi. FON network members – for free, random passersby – for a certain fee, a part of which you'll also receive as revenue. They connect differently than you do, and won't be able to snoop on your correspondence.
5. When traveling and going out to various places, you will be able to connect to exactly the same FON wireless routers (where available), and use the internet for free.
In essence, this is the "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" principle, aka (socially, not technologically) p2p on the internet. It also resembles a cult, which is why I call the device a “cultist router”. On top of that, here you can periodically buy it on the cheap, and in the US they hand it out completely for free – also a telltale sign. I personally bought one on sale for 11 euros with an antenna, which I'm glad about, especially now. Too bad there was another promo recently, and I didn't buy a second one – it would've come in handy.
Why did we need to hack it? The thing is, the standard capabilities of the router, especially the first generation (La Fonera, the second one is called La Fonera+), are quite modest. It's no secret that modified and custom/homebrew firmwares for various devices, wireless routers in particular, are very common these days. So you can install one on the Fon too, to expand its capabilities to a decent level. Actually, at home my fonera had stopped working altogether for unknown reasons. rk13 had been suggesting for a long time that I bring the device over to him, maybe some good would come of it. Funnily enough, it did - for some reason, the La Fonera worked right away at rk13's place, so I didn't even feel like hacking it anymore. But we had already agreed to it, so there was no turning back.
Next comes a geeky description of the process, and you can skip reading it if you're not an IT guy. Start reading again after the bold text.
If you google how to hack a fanera (yet another name for the router, this time – a Russian pun), you'll land on the page https://web.archive.org/web/20090216102830/https://stefans.datenbruch.de/lafonera/. Who the hell knows, maybe the process described there works for older firmwares, but for mine – 0.7.2. r2 it didn't work.
In a nutshell, it's supposed to work like this: you set the DNS ip in the settings to a special hacker server kolofonium, and the router reaches out for a firmware update. That's where they pull a fast one on it, meaning they feed it what we need, and open up external ssh access (unix command line). Very simple and convenient.
Unfortunately, in the 0.7.2 r2 firmware, La Fonera doesn't use its DNS settings, but crawls directly to the update server via IP address. And that one then feeds it the DNS where the updates lie. Luckily, it's easy to trick the fonera – you just need to connect it to another router/PC, and statically assign it the address of the Fon update server. And then, as the DNS for this second router, specify the kolofonium hacker server again, which will do all the work for us, feeding the fonera the old 0.7.1 firmware, which still hasn't patched the vulnerability for a simple hack via shell script form injection. That's what you need to use at the end to gain ssh access.
The process is far from being as convoluted as it sounds in my description. We did, however, run into an incomprehensible complication – after the hack, the fonera had no routing to the internet set up at all, and rk13 added it manually by logging in via ssh. There's nothing like that in the instructions, so, let's hope it'll just work for you as is.
The whole shebang is described on the fonerahacks.com website, which we found with some difficulty (I had already started thinking the hack wouldn't work out). People, use the wonderful capabilities of Google like link:, site: and cache: and you will be happy. I found fonerahacks.com using the link: operator – which means finding sites that link to a given address.
When we got ssh access, we installed FreeWLAN on the router – a custom firmware written by German enthusiasts. Usually people install the well-known OpenWRT, but it disables the standard cultist part of the lafonera, and I didn't want that: I didn't mind leaving it so my cultist brethren could use it. FreeWLAN keeps the fonera's features, and at the same time gives nice bonuses, like dyndns or WakeOnLAN support.
You can start reading again here:
In parallel, while rk13 was hacking the fonera, I was finishing up jailbreaking my iPhone, which takes an unusually large amount of fiddling, albeit simple. I mean, simple for me; I might not be a genius, but I know some basics of Unix, networks, and programming. On the iPhone, however, everything is usually simple – kind hackers have done everything for us. The only thing I had problems with – was the offline version of Wikipedia to view it without the internet. I hope to write about this some other time.
So we spent the evening very productively indeed, and I was mighty pleased, even though, by and large, the hacked fonera is of little use to me.
By the way, the final version of La Fonera 2 comes out on April 21st, and judging by this promo, it will be quite good. USB, a torrent client and all that.
And in the last part I will write about the circus.