Heads up about that free wifi at the 24hr diner off I-80

Stopped at the truck stop diner in North Platte last Tuesday and used their guest network to check my dispatch. Something felt off with the login page, it asked for my full name and email before connecting. I looked closer and the cert was for some random LLC, not the diner. Ran a quick packet capture on my laptop and saw traffic trying to hit port 445 on my machine. If you're doing remote diagnostics from a public spot, don't touch that network until you've got a VPN and file sharing turned off. Has anyone else seen this kind of spoofed portal setup at rest stops?

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rileyb6115d agoTop Commenter

Man, I gotta push back on this one because I actually think you might be reading way too much into it. That login page asking for your name and email is probably just the diner trying to build a customer list for their loyalty rewards, I see that at tons of mom and pop places these days. And that certificate being for some LLC, well, the diner might just have a franchise owner who set up the network under their corporate name, that happens all the time with small businesses. As for the port 445 traffic, that could honestly be your own laptop trying to reach a network printer or some background Windows update, I've seen packet captures freak people out for no reason. Running a full packet capture on a public network is pretty paranoid anyway, like you're actively looking for a problem and you found one that isn't there. If you're that worried about security, maybe you shouldn't be doing remote diagnostics from a truck stop in the first place, that's on you. I bet that wifi works just fine for everyone else and you scared yourself with your own tech skills.