Props of the day go to Tim Williams, the 19 year from Grafton who devised a crafty little exploit to get free web access on his prepaid mobiles. Both telcos have since learned about the hole, but hey, nice work Tim. We salute you!
The basic trick stems from the ability to access Youtube.com and Bing.com (and social sites like Facebook.com) for free, with no credit. What Williams did was create a sub-domain on his own site that included youtube.com, and direct traffic through there via an OpenVPN to encrypt traffic. Booya.
Optus has since closed the hole, and Vodafone says this is related to the known glitch that it’s switching off on July 8. [ZDNet]
Nathan
Tuesday, July 5, 2011 at 5:23 PMThey are not switching it off on July 8th, its switched off. They are correcting people’s bills on July 8th.
If you downloaded torrents and went over your cap they are gunna back date charges.
Got a message from Vodafone saying as much, forwarded it to Gizmodo tips and…..nothing.
Danny Allen
Tuesday, July 5, 2011 at 6:47 PMHey man, I’ve got an email from Vodafone directly that states the following: “These charges are in line with customers’ existing contracts but were not previously billed. There will be no back-dating of charges relating to these types of usage prior to 8th July 2011.” For more, see my post at here.
Florian
Tuesday, July 5, 2011 at 7:08 PMhaha, i had an idea like that a few months ago but i wasnt smart enough to be able to put it into action
bob
Tuesday, July 5, 2011 at 8:29 PMive been able to access vodafone data on my phone since my credit ran out in april… no sub domains blah blah blah
Domunix
Tuesday, July 5, 2011 at 11:19 PMSame here. Ive been able to tether and access the web without any problems on prepaid, and i still havnt bought any credit, an this has been since last december. Only hassle is reception and speed.
Jack
Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 12:43 AMHuh.. I have always wondered about exploiting that.
First time I ever saw there were free websites available, I knew there’d be an exploit.
I just never got a mobile phone.
Now I wish I snooper around a little more.