Jim March wrote:
Folks,
This is both geek and election related.
I need to know if anybody has encountered a WiFi router that
automatically creates an SSID consisting of "myqwest" followed with no
spaces by four numbers - seems to be standard "base 10" vs. hex or
whatever. I need to know if the numeric portion of the SSID was
auto-generated, and if so if the SSID changes on each boot - for
example, a single device will be "myqwest4529" and then later
automagically change to "myqwest2450" or whatever.
I haven't seen, and would be very surprised to see a device's SSID
change on its own from one day to the next.
OR, would those last four digits be locked to a given WiFi router?
Put another way: if I see an SSID of "myqwest1234" one day and
"myqwest4321" the next, is it likely, plausible or possible that it's
the same device both days? What is the significance of those last four
digits? Does a human put them in there? Are they locked into that pattern?
A human could change the number, or the entire SSID for that matter. The
SSID is a trivial configuration parameter. So it's not likely, somewhat
plausible, and certainly possible that the same device would have a
different SSID on different days.
It's very hard to tell w/out inspecting the specific device. Wifi
routers are reportedly popular targets these days for pown-ing
(hackers). So it's quite possible that the configuration (of which SSID
is a part) was modified unbeknownst to anyone.
It's also possible that the stock firmware was replaced with some other
router software such as dd-wrt or openwrt, depending on the mfr/model of
the device. Any sort of customized software may have been loaded in that
case. I would start with checking the firmware.
I don't suppose anyone checked the serial numbers. :(
Importance is...extreme. Cannot go into details yet. Affects the most
recent election in Maricopa County.
Jim
--
-Eric 'shubes'
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