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Has ethernet become illegitimate? A librarian flipped out after spotting me using ethernet (infosec.pub)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I plugged into ethernet (as wifi w/captive portal does not work for me). I think clearnet worked but I have no interest in that. Egress Tor traffic was blocked and so was VPN. I’m not interested in editing all my scripts and configs to use clearnet, so the library’s internet is useless to me (unless I bother to try a tor bridge).

I was packing my laptop and a librarian spotted me unplugging my ethernet cable and approached me with big wide open eyes and pannicked angry voice (as if to be addressing a child that did something naughty), and said “you can’t do that!”

I have a lot of reasons for favoring ethernet, like not carrying a mobile phone that can facilitate the SMS verify that the library’s captive portal imposes, not to mention I’m not eager to share my mobile number willy nilly. The reason I actually gave her was that that I run a free software based system and the wifi drivers or firmware are proprietary so my wifi card doesn’t work¹. She was also worried that I was stealing an ethernet cable and I had to explain that I carry an ethernet cable with me, which she struggled to believe for a moment. When I said it didn’t work, she was like “good, I’m not surprised”, or something like that.

¹ In reality, I have whatever proprietary garbage my wifi NIC needs, but have a principled objection to a service financed by public money forcing people to install and execute proprietary non-free software on their own hardware. But there’s little hope for getting through to a librarian in the situation at hand, whereby I might as well have been caught disassembling their PCs.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The wifi is for public use. The Ethernet isn't. How is that so hard to understand?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

I'm not surprised. I know people who don't even know what an ethernet cable is. I've worked enough IT to realize that a tangled mess of 6 cables can be as horrifying as a Predator to people. It doesn't help that everything is slowly going to POE, POE+ and even ++ now so it's doubling as power as well. In analog video days I could look at the back of a random device and instantly figure out it's purpose. That's rapidly becoming a rarity. For a worrisome section of the population, plugging in an ethernet cable is the equivalent of building a table or performing a back flip.

And when it comes to hacking, good god nobody knows anything. I remember we had a dozen students in high school (around 2000ish?) get suspended for "hacking" and really it was just that a section of the student body found a network storage location without any password protection and were using it as a flash drive on school grounds. Literally they just suspended anybody who signed their name on the homework assignments stored there.

The real crime was that drive had lunch pins for all the accounts in plain text to run their system, without a password!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

have a principled objection to a service financed by public money forcing people to install and execute proprietary non-free software on their own hardware

You are on spot there, but sadly even legislators are far from understanding the reasons why this matters so much, let alone the general public.

Whatever security policy they have, it shouldn't require you installing a random executable to your system. And it was flawed enough that it didn't care to give your device access.

And by the way, it's so awesome you carry an ethernet cable around!!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

It's not the librarians issue to worry about. It's the IT team supporting your library. If there wasn't a sign that said "not for customer use", then it's fine.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

it's clearly there to be used, a lot of places have ethernet jacks for that...
the librarian is just a luddite and you probably had a black hoodie and a terminal open so she assumed you were selling fentanyl to pedophile ransomware communists...

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago

Idk what I read because it is so stupid.

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