Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2014 July 15

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July 15

Trying to find an old pc program from 1995/1998

Hi there, i'll try and give as much info as possible. Back in the 90s my sister had a game on our old crappy pc that was a mix of mini games but also had microsoft word type of program built into it. The main character was a tall purple guy with a large chin and always had his eyes closed.

When you wanted to navigate to different menus you would click on a firepole that would slide you down to the next selection, if you went to the bottom level you were treated to a minigame where the room was pitch black and clicking the mouse would light a match revealing a character.

I know this isn't much info to go off. This has literally puzzled me into my adult years trying to find the name of this game. It may only be for nostalgia but I'd still like to find out. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.218.90.18 (talk) 11:32, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

This sounds very familiar. I don't recall the word processor but I do remember it as an art game - lots of sections where you could color or place pictures of items and other similar activities. There is a chance I only had a limited trial version. I definitely remember the fire pole and the basement. Ours came with a subscription to a large-format magazine about kids software and lots of trial/shareware stuff on a CD with each issue. It's also what introduced us to the Humongous Entertainment games like Putt-Putt and Freddy Fish. I can't recall the name of the magazine or the game, but now you have me on a mission. :-) Katie R (talk) 11:57, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

I'm trying to track down the magazine, so hopefully I can find an archive of games it included or copies of the discs. I feel like I'll recognize the game's name if I see it on the list - we played it pretty often. It was large-format, and the disc had a sort of interactive area for kids to explore that brought them to the different game listings. Some games on the disc were just screenshots and descriptions, but others were trials, and I feel like there may have been one or two full games on it even. I'm not having any luck yet.

Do you remember some sort of animated intro, maybe with a roller-coaster cart or something bringing you or the purple guy into the building where everything was? Katie R (talk) 12:35, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

This is what I was remembering: Fine Artist An image search for Fine Artist Microsoft shows lots of familiar parts of the game. No idea on the magazine I was thinking of... Katie R (talk) 12:38, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

I didn't have it, but Creative Writer takes place in the same setting and has the McZee character as well. It's a word processor, so maybe that's the one you're thinking of, or you have memories of both. I'm certain that the dark basement scene is in Fine Artist. Katie R (talk) 13:05, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

WiFi Security Question

I was reading this article titled "The beginners guide to breaking website security with nothing more than a Pineapple" where it says:

Most wireless devices including laptops, tablets and smartphones have network software that automatically connects to access points they remember. This convenient feature is what gets you online without effort when you turn on your computer at home, the office, coffee shops or airports you frequent. Simply put, when your computer turns on, the wireless radio sends out probe requests. These requests say "Is such-and-such wireless network around?"

Why would a WiFi client device need to broadcast a signal indicating that it's looking for a particular network? Isn't the router already broadcasting a signal announcing that the router is available for WiFi connections? Isn't that enough? I don't see any need for both the client and the server to both broadcast these signals. As an analogy, the radio in my car doesn't broadcast a signal saying that it's looking for WLUP 97.9 FM. Instead, it just scans the for the signal sent out by WLUP 97.9. As the article above demonstrated, this opens up a huge security risk and it seems completely unnecessary. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 13:52, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

It could be because a WIFI router can be set to not broadcast its SSID for security reasons. Logically, the device would then need to keep pinging requests. Zzubnik (talk) 14:50, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Even if the router is not broadcasting SSID signal, I don't think it needs to be 'probed' by the client prior to connecting. If your computer 'remembers' the network SSID, then it doesn't need to listen for that broadcast, and can just 'tune' to it as in the radio example OP gives. I'm a bit out of my depth here (and welcome correction), but I call on the claim that a laptop running e.g. OSX will actively send out 'probe requests' by default. I thought it would just listen for SSID broadcasts, and then you have to manually connect if you think you have signal from a SSID-silent network that you can join. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:33, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

The term 'probe request' refers specifically to the 'probe request frame' sent out by a wifi client actively scanning for networks. On each of the 11 (or 13 or 14, depending on country) wifi channels the client sends out the 'probe request', then listens for responses. Even when looking for a specific network, this is necessary in order to find out which channel the network is broadcasting on.

Passive scanning is also possible, since most wifi access points periodically transmit a 'beacon' frame that contains much the same information as a 'probe response' frame. However, passive scanning would take significantly longer, since the client would have to sit on each channel waiting to receive the beacon broadcasts.

I'm not sure if silent networks (configured not to broadcast their SSID) respond to probe requests directed at their specific SSID. —Noiratsi (talk) 17:07, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! I didn't consider the extra time it would take to wait on each channel until each router in range might present a beacon. I guess that explains the desire for active searching that the OP is asking about. Does anyone know where we can read about this active scanning and probe requesting on WP? I've looked at Network_cloaking and Wi-Fi and Wireless LAN, but none of them say much about actual Handshaking involved in connecting e.g. a laptop to a Wi-Fi network. SemanticMantis (talk) 17:20, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

You could try this article. It doesn't detail the actual process, but gives information on the various possible messages the protocol allows for.

Another crucial point is that the vulnerability described in the article AQFK linked to only applies to open wifi networks, which are inherently vulnerable anyway. Anyone can impersonate them, anyone can connect to them, etc. Restricting yourself to passive scanning does nothing to mitigate the security risks of an open network: the actual connection process works the same regardless of how the client found out about the network's existence. —Noiratsi (talk) 17:31, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Yes this seems to be similar to the point highlighted by SemanticMantis. Note also while I didn't read the article that well, it doesn't seem to suggest broadcasting SSIDs you're looking for is a major security threat. The only thing it really seems to mention is that there's a slight risk of you broadcasting an SSID you don't want people to know about, the example given is "Mistress Angeliques BDSM Palace" (although I suspect such a place would be more discreet). It does mention the way devices will automatically connect to SSIDs they think they know has some risks, but it doesn't seem to suggest you need probes for that (it only mentions it helps).

Just emulating a few well known open SSIDs (e.g. a fast food outlet or coffee chain or even the example they give "Apple Demo") will likely catch many victims. In addition, I don't know the limit of SSIDs an AP can broadcast, but even if it's something like 10, if you change your SSID targets every 5 minutes, thats 120 SSIDs you can emulate in 60 minutes. So while a device probing for SSIDs may help you know what to emulate, it isn't generally going to be essential. The device could try to detect this, but I'm not sure there's any way that would work well. How can it be sure that the 10 APs with similar strength aren't 10 real APs? Adding a complex layer like using other location data and the phone movement sensors to try and detect if the phone is really moving and seeing different APs, or it's not moving but a lot of different APs keep showing up also seems a silly idea.

Then there's the question of why someone would bother to do that anyway. If targetting a specific device, there are probably better ways to find out what SSIDs it may trust. If targetting devices in general, just emulate a few common APs and catch who you catch. Or use some other method, e.g. as suggested in the article go to a place and put up your AP which sounds like it's provided by the place. In other words, even without probing, you're not going to provide much added security. Probably why as far as I can tell, the article doesn't seem to suggest it's that much a concern.

Nil Einne (talk) 20:09, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

The problem is that many devices (this certainly predates the iphone/android issues) would probe (which is a specific 802.11 packet) for access points they knew. This gives away the BSSID (not to mention the MAC of the requestor) and possibly the SSID. It's done not just on non-broadcasting ESSIDs, in my observations. I think that most current implementations will only attach to the specific BSSID... and giving up the encryption key--WPA or even WEP--won't compromise it... but it does give information about 1) who you're looking for, and 2) who you are. And as to the OPs point, no, this is largely not necessary... most APs broadcast their ESSID and everything else you need hundreds of times per second. But it's a common fact that most (if not all) of the implementations I've seen actively probe for these, hence the leakage. Apple's approach to randomize the probing mac is a great step. Shadowjams (talk) 03:28, 16 July 2014 (UTC)