Reddit user [nomoreimfull] posted code for a dynamic WiFi beacon to r/arduino. The simple, but clever, sketch is preloaded with some rather familiar lyrics and is configured to Rickroll wireless LAN users via the broadcast SSID (service set identifier) of an ESP32 WiFi radio.
The ESP32 and its smaller sibling the ESP8266 are tiny microcontrollers that featuring built-in WiFi support. With their miniature size, price, and power consumption characteristics, they’ve become favorites for makers, hackers, and yes pranksters for a wide variety of projects. They can be easily programmed using their own SDK or through a “board support” extension to the Arduino IDE.
For the dynamic WiFi beacon, the ESP32 is placed into AP (access point) mode and broadcasts its human readable name (SSID) as configured. What makes the SSID dynamic, or rolling, is that the sketch periodically updates the SSID to a next line of text stored within the code. Of course, in the Rickroll prank this means the next line of lyrics from “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley himself.
Always a favorite prank, we’ve seen Rickrolls take the form of IR remote controls , free WiFi servers, and coin cell throwies.
Rick Astley picture: Wjack12, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Nice one & thought provoking too as another layer of security ;-)
Thanks for post
I honestly thought it was gonna be an open AP with a captive portal login page that would host the Rick Roll video.
I recently installed WLED on an ESP32 and that made me mentally note I must look up how that captive portal thing done; doubly so now :)
Like this one?
https://hackaday.com/2016/07/19/never-gonna-give-up-free-wifi/
Perfect! The one thing I’d add is peppering the lyrics in the TOS agreement ♥️
I thought so too.
I made one a handful of years ago with a raspberry pi zero and a modified version of pirtatebox.
@JosephLong Not sure if intentional, but the tag for post is “Rrickroll”? Mentioned because this nearly meta link the previous captive portal project from 2016 @Phr4gG3r mentioned.
This is an article? This has been done countless times for years
Siempre pienso si podria crearse un chat usando las señales ssid, de forma que podria comunicarse con gente cerca sin usar ningun tipo de “conexion”.