ABE blocking connectivity while on the road

[Oliver L.]

I normally have ABE enabled and don't have any problems when using my home network.

However when I go on the road I often notice that I can't access networks unless I disable ABE. I've read the FAQ (skimmed it) and it seemed like it deals mostly with specific websites, however, my problem is when I'm trying to use a different server altogether like at Starbucks or Barnes and Noble.

Is there a way to allow everything from a particular server without turning off ABE altogether? Sorry if this question is very obvious, my eyes just glaze over when I start reading about rulesets etc.

[Giorgio Maone]

Can I see the ABE warning messages you get?
However this kind of issue usually is caused by these hotspots redirecting whatever Internet site you try to visit (e.g. Google) to their connectivity access web interface, which is a local address.
This unavoidably causes the LOCAL rule to be triggered.

If you know the address of the access web interface (e.g. https://www.accesspoint.com/login or https://192.168.1.1/gateway/access ), you can setup an exception rule in the beginning of the NoScript Options|Advanced|ABE SYSTEM ruleset, in order to override the LOCAL rule, like this:

Code: Select all

Site www.accesspoint.com 192.168.1.1
Accept

[Oliver L.]

Yes that's exactly what it is (places that require you to agree to their terms before being able to browse).

I'll try to do the ruleset as posted and see what happens.

[MarcS]

Me too.

I had two difficulties - the first is that it was not clear what the problem was since I knew my network link seemed up and Firefox diligently loaded cached pages. It wasnt until I poked around in the exceptions after the search button in google wasn't working right, and remembered the ABE notes in the update that I realized what happened. The second was that once I realized it was ABE, I didn't notice a menu option to temporarily disable it for this site, which was all that was really needed to click-through the airport & hotel wifi disclaimers...and with ABE blocking your http access in its entirety, it does take an amount of effort to work around it.

(There may have been an appropriate menu option, but once I disabled ABE & clicked through the disclaimer, the exception went away so I stopped investigating too much further).

[dhouwn]

This stupid and careless technique of intercepting has to stop!
On another note, you might have similar issues if the first site you surf to (e.g. because it's your start page) is utilising HTTP Strict Transport Security, as for example PayPal (be it that you are using a browser supporting STS and you were on this site before).
Firefox 3.6.9+ has now native support for that security feature, so one does not even need to have NoScript to run into an issue with this interception stupidity.