Marriott Uses DPI to Insert Ads to its Guests

 
Ad insertion is back - maybe not with public ISP (although we saw some intentions during the recent months - here, here and even here) but at least in the semi-public hospitality market.

Justin Watt described in his blog a recent expeince he had when he used Marriott's Wi-Fi service - "So I’m checking my blog on the hotel wifi, like ya do, and I notice something a little off with the style. There’s a dark colored bar at the top of the page that shouldn’t be there. That’s funny. Maybe a recent Firefox update changed how they treat CSS? .. somewhere between the internet and my computer, someone is injecting JavaScript into EVERY SINGLE PAGE I LOAD."

".. In short, the Courtyard Marriott is using the RXG to inject JavaScript into the HTML of every webpage its hotel customers view for the purpose of injecting ads (and in the meantime, breaking YouTube). Marriott’s wireless internet service provider is a third-party company called Hotel Internet Services, so it is possible, though unlikely, that Marriott doesn’t know what’s going on. But it’s crazy to me that I’m paying $368 a night for a hotel room, and this is how I get treated".
 
Marriott uses a Wi-Fi Gateway from RG Nets that among other things supports "Per-User Traffic Shaping, Role-based AAA policy enforcement engine and Identify and group applications by server IP address, source port(s), destination port(s) and DPI signature .. at 100 Mpbs"

See "Hotel Wifi JavaScript Injection" - here.