Hacking JiWire for Fun and Free WiFi

Few things are worse than being stuck alone in an airport for hours on end because the airline can’t keep their shit together and your flight got delayed. Worse is the sinking feeling you get when you discover an open wireless network, only to find that you have to pay out your ass for access. Now, I have no problem with shelling out a few bucks for a day’s worth of access, but what really gets me are the far more common setups that require a monthly subscription.

One of the most popular providers of public space Wifi is JiWire, and on a recent layover in Chicago, my friend Michelle figured out a technique to bypass the JiWire pay-wall using their own ads. Essentially, you hijack the ad-server which allows images from other domains to load whatever page you want. Full details on click-through.