I recently learned about LocalSend and was intrigued by how it functioned by only using the WiFi network of the devices. I did not know my LAN had these capabilities.
Now that I’ve learned about it, I am excited to know if there is anything else I can do with it. Perhaps there could be a way to send prank notifications to all the connected devices, create a private chat room, or have custom LAN parties.
I genuinely do not know anything about how WiFi or LAN in general works in this matter. Is it possible for me to build my own applications that make use of these features? If so, I would love to get a direction on what resources or guides I should be looking for. If not, I would still be happy to use similar pre-built applications.
Check out Pihole. It’s a network filtering tool. It runs on a raspberry pi. You can access it via ssh (command line) or webgui (local LAN web interface.) You can leave the raspberry pi hooked up to your router headless (meaning not hooked up to a display). Pihole is fun to mess around with. You can block all sorts of bullshit, such as ads on smart tvs/devices and stuff like that. It won’t block youtube ads though since those are served from the main youtube domain. You need ublock origin for that. Same with Twitch. Everything else basically you can block though.
Check out [email protected]
I made a similar thing on my home network. It uses php’s built in file upload and runs in the web browser so you don’t even need an app. It’s just basic beginner level html and php in 2 files that goes on my lan server. Makes it super easy to transfer files between phones, windows pcs and Linux pcs.
I gave up on fighting with windows pcs to try getting them to connect to samba shares a long time ago and you’ll never access a samba or windows network share on a smartphone without paying money for some shitty app anyway. Despite this relatively low-tech solution it ends up being more practical just because it’s easy and convenient.
A simple network share.
Does your router have a USB port?
Plug in a thumb drive (32-64gb is fine) and configure it in your router’s admin interface to share on the network. (FTP and SMB shares)
An easy way to have all devices in a house able to access a shared directory. (Pictures, movies, music, files)
If you live near a Starbucks, you can buy a cheap router, name its network “Starbucks Public Wifi”, make it public with no password, but also not connect it to anything.
People will connect, and get really really mad and Starbucks will be just as confused as the customers.
Then setup a DNS server and a fake website to trick people into giving you their credit card information, free money!
PSA don’t do this, it’s obviously sarcasm ;)
Na, the staff are overworked enough. Don’t lump something they have no control over on their laps.
If you can someone do it to the CEO’s private jet for his 1,000 mile commute to work a few times a week that’d be cool.
That’s a special kind of evil. I think I’m mostly ok with it.
This is done in Hotels everyday to use Keyboard loggers and get your information.
Always use a VPN when connecting to an open network.
This, always put protection around your tube when using it with other connections.
I connected to Starbucks and then got a baby 🤷♂️
You can buy a raspberry pi and have Pihole setup on it. It’ll act as your local dns server and block any ad domains for the whole household.
I had done this for several years but recently I’m running into the issue where my home router won’t let me specify a DNS server that is on the same subnet. I dont have multiple networks running at home so I can’t make a Pihole work anymore.
That’s a weird situation. Have you tried spinning up a second subnet on your modem?
You can set a static IP on the router, disable it’s DHCP, and have pihole manage DHCP with the routers static IP as the gateway
Damn does this mean I have to buy another raspberry pi or can the one running octoprint serve double duty?
Orange pi zero 3, 1.5GB. plenty for pihole and 30€ instead of 100€ or whatever bullshit RPI is charging these days.
At least a Pi 4 can do both. Source: Did do exactly that.
Thank you!
Congrats on dipping your toes into networking! Don’t let it suck you in too much or you’ll end up with a career change.
Plenty of resources out there to learn from, just pick a project and try to implement it. Or just play around with netcat (just ‘nc’ nowadays).
Look into the TCP/IP stack (or the OSI model, both cover the core concepts) for an overview of how applications talk to each other. This will also help you understand how LocalSend probably works (my guess is broadcasting to your network and seeing what devices are listening on a certain port. Some LAN-enabled games work like this, others aren’t as magical and ask you to provide an address and a port).
send prank notifications to all the connected devices
Net send has entered the chat.
Oh god, Net Send.
At one point it was my job to track down and upgrade old PCs that had been moved by users. To my delight, I found that Net Send was enabled on all the org’s devices. I had the bright idea to use it to pop up a message on the affected PCs asking them to call me and provide a location. I copied a script from an old website and modified it to work with a list of hostnames. It, uh, worked - but while I was testing my script I ran it without commenting out the line that sent the message to all devices on the subdomain.
I turned my phone off for the rest of the day.
Oh shit forgot about that. I was in high school when we figured that out.
Pretty sure everyone in the late 90’s and early 2000’s knew some poor kid who was dragged out of class for “hacking” the school network with net send. Send “you got a virus lol” to every computer in the computer lab in 6th grade, and suddenly you have your school computer privileges revoked for “hacking all the computers” until you graduate 6 years later.
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Set up hotspots to amuse your neighbors:
WeCanHearYouHavingSex
FBISurveilanceVan#63
FreeCandyMy neighbors had the FBI Surveillance Van SSID, so naturally I set mine up as “Definitely Not Russian Hackers”
I’ve been doing the FBI Surveillance van one for years. 50 is the 5G band and I have 24 as the 2.4G band.
WiFi to rick roll:
WiFi to replace all images by proxy:
Seriously Red Team:
Those are fun, but they don’t work for most sites anymore since pretty much every site has started using https and browsers automatically upgrade to https if it’s available.
It’s basic, but you can use something like Plex or Jellyfin to stream music and/or movies over your local network, that’s a pretty easy one to setup (you may already use one of these services). So depending on the devices you have, you can listen/watch whatever you want, wherever you want around the house (TV, iPad, whatever).
Maybe crosspost to [email protected] and/or [email protected] since this is in the ballpark of what we talk about there.
Syncthing.org is a fun and useful tool that works over local wifi.
Put the network name as ‘FBI Wiretap’ and then talk to your neighbors, asking if they’ve seen a lot of unmarked vans on the street.
Use netcat (nc) or similar for local unencrypted one to one chats (half joking)
