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Wardriver Charged with Theft of Communications
BiggsTheCat writes "A number of news sources are reporting that a Toronto man is the first to be charged with "theft of communications" (Canadian Criminal Code S. 342.1) for downloading child pornography using someone else's residential wireless network. The "War Driver" was caught naked from the waist down driving the wrong way down a one-way street, with a laptop in hand. The Edmonton Sun warns that 'War Driving ... is becoming more and more common among perverts trying to avoid online detection'. Yeah."
Wow! I wonder if they told the owner (s?) of the Internet connection he was using? Can you imagine that phone call?
I guess it doesn't say much for the intelligence of the idiot involved. Why drive around? Why not find a good signal and park? I've sat in my car using my laptop before -- never got questioned. Of course I wasn't driving (and I was fully clothed). It's hard to consider this a victory against war drivers or child abusers when the champ was only caught because he was being an idiot....
I also doubt this will bring any major attention to the underlying problem (unsecured home APs). It'll probably take something like Grandma Jones being charged with transmission of child pornography to bring this problem to the general publics attention. I feel bad for the innocent person who is going to wind up being charged (sooner or later -- if it hasn't happened already) by cops that don't know what is going on -- to be defended by a lawyer who probably doesn't know what's going on -- to be tried by a jury who doesn't know what's going on. Scary situation to be in.
Or is the more scary thought being nabbed by RIAA (whose burden of proof is a lot less then the cops) for some punk teenager next door using your connection to download/share mp3s? Wonder how long (or if it already has) until this happens?
Either way, your into thousands (or tens of thousands) of dollars worth of legal fees. The former case is definitely the worst (who wants to be labeled as "that guy" with all the child porn), but either scenario seems likely to destroy/severely set-back your life.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I thought Michael Jackson was driving through Las Vegas last night, not Canada.
And why did you staple the trout to the RAM?
You'd think he would be more careful. Driving the wrong way up a one way street, no pants, whacking off to kiddie porn? This guy was asking for it!
The "War Driver" was caught naked from the waist down driving the wrong way down a one-way street, with a laptop in hand. I'm trying to figure out how he was driving if he had the laptop in one hand and, well you know where I'm going with this...
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
LOL.....you sure he didn't have something else in hand?
Basil
"with a laptop in hand."
That's not a laptop, officer.
Karnal
Theft, child porn, indecent exposure, and a traffic violation all at the same time? Surely he could have killed someone and committed some sort of business crime to complete the spectrum of criminal activity.
"America Done Weirdly"
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
...at least not during the same time. Sorry, but i thought that to be common sense. This Person is not a Wardriver but an complete idiot. "Real" Wardrivers do not wardrive for the sake of downloading or getting a personal advantage, but just for the fun of finding and mapping unsecure networks.
... what was in the other hand.
The guy was arrested for kiddie porn and this theft of communications crap was tacked on, because, they could.
Contribute to the greater good, bust those wardrivers.
Is the person who ran the unsecured AP in any way liable for what was done from his connection?
This case could be used as further proof that if an illegal attack originated from your internet connection it doesn't provide reliable proof that you actually did it (Or that any authorized users at that connection for that matter).
Everyone that disagrees with me is a paid shill
Fuck, I'm on someone else's wireless network right now.
--#!
Bit of a difference between someone wardriving out of curiousity, or using a nearby open WAP because it was there, and someone *looking around for open WAPs specifically so that they can perform illegal acts without traceability, then jacking off to child pornography in a car using said WAP WHILE DRIVING*.
Maybe there's a slippery slope thing going on here but somehow I'm not going to really care about *what* happens to this person or this case.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Had the ISP been subpenoed they would turn over the necessary logs, show their cutomer's IP address (on his router) as the offender. How many perverts will turn this around the other way? Buy wireless routers, leave the settings wide open, download their kiddy pron at heart's content, making sure to always get rid of temp files, history, and cookies. If they get busted, the simply say, "it wasn't me, someone hacked into my wireless router, and downloaded that stuff on their onw machine... Shows we need to hold net admins (even of SoHo's to some standards of use.
Could we have our hardware manufacturers include non default SSID's, on a cdkey type set up process, so the default isn't "default" or "linksys" but "As3deyt#$seKJ34". Changing it upon sucessful install should still be allowed, but at least we've reduced those that just leave 'em as they got 'em outta the box.
At the moment the wireless security that ships with routers is inherently insecure, but some places seem to thin it's necessary.
I have already been castigated by the university for running a WiFi node that doesn't conform to their requirements (WEP is disabled) - even though it's ad hoc, there is no DHCP, each host on the wireless net only accepts ssh connections from hosts with known IPs and mac addresses and oubound routing (from connections terminated with ssh against into an authed socks proxy) is stictly controlled. Turning on WEP too would drop speeds to a useless level for little extra benefit.
Maybe new standards will change this, but for now the media should really stop focusing on WEP as the be all and end all of security to the detriment of people competent enough to handle it themselves in a better fashion.
Beep beep.
some of the blame should fall on the homeowner for not having the security features available for his wireless network enabled. If everyone used the encryption features that come with their WLANs, then this kind of thing would happen much less often (if at all).
Crushing dreams at the speed of sarcasm
So he can whack off, use a laptop for hacking AND drive a car at the same time?! He must be a very flexible man!
The Edmonton Sun warns that 'War Driving ... is becoming more and more common among perverts trying to avoid online detection'.
Well, this guy did avoid online detection : he was caught with road detection, driving the wrong way half-naked. It's not like the owner of the unprotected wifi AP called the cops, he was just acting odd on the road.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Aside from the charges made against him for the perverted video he was watching (and not to belittle the charges) it would seem that there is a major point that he has been charged with "Theft of Communications".
This would suggest that all "Wardrivers" are at risk of being prosecuted for "Theft of Communications" regardless of what data they recieve over someone elses network.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
driving naked from the waist down with a portable in one hand (I don't want to think what was in the other) should be an offence in and of itself ?
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Gillespie said the man used Kazaa, a popular file-sharing web program commonly used to share music, to download the graphic material.
In a study using 12 words associated with child pornography, the U.S. General Accounting Office found that 42% of 1,286 files on the peer-to-peer site contained child porn.
Those figures didn't surprise Gillespie.
What are these idiots on? There are a lot more than 1286 files available via Kazaa, morpheus, etc.. It's not a "site" and there is no way that 42% of it is child porn.. That is absolutely nuts. Most of it is Movies and MP3's There is a fair bit of regular porn as well. If 42% were child porn, that would usurp every single other category.. That stat is just stupid. The sad part is that there are loads of people out there who will believe that nonsense without even bothering to run the numbers..
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
I posted this to /. last night 11pm local toronto time.
Boy am I naive. When I first read this, I thought he had no shirt. Another small article from the Toronto Star
-- I need to remember to update my sig
I'm surprised how many people have unsecured wireless access points. I'm not talking about WEP, just basic access restricton based on MAC address. I have a Linksys wireless router, and I have it set to only allow certain wireless MAC addresses to connect. If a friend with a wireless laptop is visiting or for some reason I get a new wireless adapter, all I have to do is log into the router from a wired computer or one that already has access , find the denied MAC address in the access logs, and allow it access. Nothing has to be done on the client machines, and I don't have to worry about wardrivers.
This story should be rated M. It has many sexual references, including:
"laid"
"busting"
"police found the driver--with no pants on--" (so they find that guy but couldn't find their pants first?)"
"serious ramifications"
Check out this author's hidden meanings! I think we know who's going to be applying for that spot of porn viewer at that PD! "I'm just doing research for my next article!"
Cover your eyes and click this link!
You Sir are a genius : you manage to tack on a completely unrelated story a lame Mac/PC flamebait. Bravo ...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
What a freak! I'm sure this character kept stains on the carpet of his vehicle to count coup Lewinski style. Piling on the charges (theft of comm) to nail this fool isn't itself a bad thing but it is annoying to have another tenuous connection paraded in the press between tech and child porn.
Blame for what? In Canada people don't even lock their front doors (at least the one's interviewed by Michael Moore in "Bowling for Columbine"), so I wouldn't expect them to lock their WiFi.
Maybe the homeowner is stupid for allowing someone to eat up his bandwidth and access his network, but no way you can "blame" him for any of the criminal activity.
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
that's who will be applying for that job, besides the author.
Cover your eyes and click this link!
stupid faggoty slashdot dweeb humour
Of course the laptop was in a hand.
To leave it on your lap when you're nekid from the waist down would be to risk sterilization by cauterization.
The coolest voice ever.
Too bad with Windows XP (the first Windows OS made after WiFi because semi-popular) it is that easy.
I wonder what he was thinking? "Hm. I'm afraid of being caught for looking at child pornography... so I'll beat off in the car while driving the wrong way while I download the child porn onto my laptop. Ain't nobody gonna catch me now!"
http://mediagoblin.org/
This was obviously someone without much knowledge in wireless networking. I personally have been too lazy to setup SSIDs, so I just do MAC filters for all of my computers, tedious to set it up, but once it's done it's done. No need to remember numbers after a format or anything.
hahaha..
Canadian War Jerking..
hahaha...
i hate microsoft.
Vehicles aren't supposed to roll over when their tires fail.
Investigation showed the man had hooked into a wireless computer network at a nearby house to gain access to a resident's Internet connection and download images from child pornography websites.
The scheme, known as "war driving," allows a computer with wireless Internet capability to tap into a wireless home network and access the World Wide Web, usually without fear of discovery.
Well there's a nice bit of yellow-press tradition. Linking war driving strongly to the child porn aspect and never mentioning that most people who do this aren't doing anything illegal with the information or access they're using. In fairness to the story, most of it was about how stupid in general this guy was being and the disgusting stuff found at his residence later, but three paragraphs at the end of the story seems to shift a lot of attention to a very minor aspect of the crime. He could have been collecting that junk from his home cable modem connection just as easily.
"The "War Driver" was caught naked from the waist down driving the wrong way down a one-way street, with a laptop in hand [downloading child pornography]."
I should think that perhaps the "Theft of Communications" charge is the least of this individual's problems. That's really one for the record books there, almost to the point of being a publicity stunt of some sort. Naked from the waist down, driving the wrong way on a one-way street, using a laptop, and downloading child pornography. What do you say to something like that? I mean that for each person.
[Suspect] "There a... problem officer?"
[Officer] "Do you know why I pulled you over?"
-blank stare-
[Officer] "You were driving the wrong way down this one-way street."
[Suspect] "Oh my, well I'm sorry about that, officer..."
[Officer] "Well, I'm afraid I'm going to have to write you a... hey, where are your pants?!"
[Suspect] "Oh.. well.. I'm getting them clea..." -gets cut off by cop-
[Officer] "What is that? Are you using a laptop computer while driving sir??"
[Suspect] "Well, I uhh..." -gets cut off again-
[Officer] "What the HELL is that??!! Is that child pornography??!! Oh God..
[Suspect] "No, no! It's not what you think!"
[Officer] "Just where the hell are you getting that from?! Oh, so you're connected to someone's wireless internet from here???"
-Cop thinks to himself: "how the hell am I going to write this one up?"
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
This was obviously someone without much knowledge in wireless networking. I personally have been too lazy to setup SSIDs, so I just do MAC filters for all of my computers, tedious to set it up, but once it's done it's done. No need to remember numbers after a format or anything.
Gotta be a troll.
I guess that open WiFi router didn't have the Belken auto-anti-pr0n nagger eh?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Excuse me, whose rights online? I know I don't feel the least bit oppressed.
Am I to believe that there's a large enough segment of Slashdot users who would drive around downloading child porn to make this a "your rights online" issue?
Y2K Compliant since the late 1890s
Why didn't he just download the pr0n to the hdd, and save it for later to enjoy in the comfort of his own home... he prolly read about wardriving on /. and thought he'd try it out, stupid wanna-be geeks...
I think this is one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time. I've really got to browse at -1 more often.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
mmm...is it only me thinking "unverified story" and "some new urban legends around" ?
I recently found an open wireless network (i.e. no WEP activation) near the campus where I teach.
...
Given the quality of what you usually post, I assume you teach at a university for the mentally disadvantaged
It's always in your lap.
I suppose it could be considered a "lap-top"
Was he using an iBook?
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
If he was using it and driving at the same time, it was obviously a .. Palm-Pilot.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Vote YES for the Wireless Terrorist Prevention Act!
--
Power to the Peaceful
Just like the "Crackers vs. Hackers" nomenclature argument, this one has gotten into the media and has been ruined.
Wardriving doesn't have a history that is decades long, so it'll be pretty easy for people to go back and see what the scene started out as. Wardrivers didn't steal bandwidth, they mapped AP locations. If you start using other people's bandwidth, that's no longer wardriving.
Next (and be sure you understand this), if I put my wireless card in monitor mode, then it is impossible for me to associate with your AP.
I can appreciate that Canadian law has something on the books about interception of telecommunications and passwords and all that. I'm not speaking in favor of this child-porn idiot. One action is simply listening to your AP broadcast packets, taking note of SSIDs and things. The other is honestly scarfing bandwidth.
called a "joy stick" I would think...
lots of ugly possibilities here...
3) would have to be highly profitable in order to negate the court costs and the likely loss of privacy. But yes, that would be about right.
From the Canadian Criminal Code, S.342.1 Unauthorized Use of Computer:
Doesn't that make a URL a "computer password?" Would I be guilty of violating S.342.1 by telling my friends to go to goatse.cx or tubgirl.com?
It's fun to surprise our friends (and enemies) with URLs like those, but the "colour of right" is definitely lacking from such a gesture.
....and all this time i was just trying to check my work email without having to dial in.
-- The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thi
Yes, vehicles with high centers of gravity do roll over when their tires fail, especially at high speeds. Be it Ford, Jeep or GM, when their tires fail like that, there will be roll overs.
They do if they're "Built Ford Tough"
All this is is bad press for the wardriving community. Wardrivers do not participate in theft of service.
The media is once again associating the term wardriving with theft of service when in reality they have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
Speaking at Defcon 12 - Credit Card Networks Revisted: Pen
They think they're so hot.. Just because they never got caught driving without pants. Random Simpsons Quote #492459
He who fights with Monkeys must take it upon himself not to become a Monkey.
Talk about multitasking! Glad they caught that pervert. I can hear the police now, "Get your hands up! I said your hands."
That's just like the time that I...oh, wait better post that as AC.
I'm against dangerous driving and child abuse, but charging him with "theft of communications" is an extremely dangerous precendent. Using free Wi-Fi networks is something that a lot of people do, and I've even seen Steve Ballmer say that he does it. Of course, that was when he was trying to sell Windows with Wi-Fi support. He'll change his tune when Palladium arrives.
The propaganda against free Wi-Fi is particularly worrying because most of the complaints aren't about "free as in beer" but about "free as in speech": Many powerful people within the government and corporations are trying to associate anonymous Internet access with evils ranging from pedophilia to terrorism to spam. And the Edmonton Sun article goes even further:
The man used Kazaa, a popular file-sharing web program commonly used to share music, to download the graphic material.
In a study using 12 words associated with child pornography, the U.S. General Accounting Office found that 42% of 1,286 files on the peer-to-peer site contained child porn.
This is obvious BS (isn't "peer-to-peer site" an oxymoron?), but it shows that the RIAA is succeeding in its campaign to get P2P associated with child porn.
I leave my WAP open, it's faster and easier to setup. I could see being responsible for excessive bandwidth usage for failing to protect my WAP, but I fail to see how I could possibly be responsible for everything someone does through the connection. Should the person in this story who left his WAP open be charged with downloading child pornography? That would be ridiculous.
There are many analogous situations we could use. Let's say I neglect to lock my front door, someone breaks in and steals a handgun. They then kill someone with the gun. Am I guilty of murder?
Another situation. Let's say I'm packing my car, and leave stuff by the side of the car to arrange most efficiently later. If someone comes by and takes shit while I'm getting more stuff to pack, is it not stealing just because it was easy to do?
My mother recently left her keys in her car door. If someone came by and stole the truck, then ran over someone, would she be charged with hit and run?
Too bad it took MS that long. I bought a Mac and an airport base station in 1999, and they worked together flawlessly.
Also, I'm running my network with WEP off (but it only allows MAC addresses that are on my list, not perfect, but at least better than nothing) because my girlfriend's XP laptop refuses to connect to the encrypted network, no matter what I do.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Brings new meaning to WAP..... /ducks
I had just bought my smartly oversized black pants the day before, and I had this very important business client at work who's just arrived and was led into my office by the receptionist, as I rose to enthausiastically shake hands with him and exchange warm cliches, I then sat down again to only hear my pants being torn by the velocity of my weight and the snaky arm of the antique chair that accidentally got into my pocket. Talk about creating first impressions!!...
After the meeting I still had other clients at work that afternoon so I rushed home to quickly change and return before they arrive, only to piss off some drivers at a traffic jam and be stopped by a gray-haired cop who after approaching me froze for a few seconds with a gaze of alarmed puzzlement to see what must've looked like I had my pants unzipped, my boxers visible, and my hand on my groin.
Talk about misfortune on an otherwise beautiful summer afternoon...
...was the ONLY THING he had in hand?
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
It's Darwinism, just in modern day. That fucking piece of shit is gonna stay behind bars for being retarded, hopefully the inmates rape him in half. I can't stand child pornographers, fucking wastes.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
It's no surprise to me that Joe Sixpack does not secure his wireless access point - I'm amazed he even gets it to work.
Half the time the administration utilities don't function, the unit's own IP address is something unreachable (unless Joe knows howto create static routes) like 192.168.1.100, and don't even get me started on the horrible problems of WEP keys on Windows XP pre- and post- SP1.
Until these devices can be setup easily in a secure way by a normal person we'll continue to have plenty of unexpectedly wide-open SoHo networks.
"Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace." V.Stone, Microsoft Corporation
.. you first think that it should be rated "M" and not "AA" (that's "R" to you Americans.) :)
this means that eric s raymond has turned up! was wondering where he disappeared.
CP issues aside, how can you be convicted of 'stealing' when you used a presumed open/free service.
Since public wireless does exist, and isn't that uncommon, you can safely assume that if you run across an UNSECURED signal its for public use... Be it from a persons house or the nearby cyber cafe.. you cant be 100% sure where that signal is coming from anyway....
Now if its encrypted, or otherwise secured , THEN you might have a case...
However, considering 90% of home broadband is flat rate, ( and a lot of dedicated business service is too ) since when is the bandwidth being 'stolen'? that's almost as bad as saying music piracy is theft.. ( if the home owner had pay per use, or if you blow their monthly cap and incur charges.. sure, then its theft of service.. )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Sounds like they caught this guy redhanded.
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
Cover your eyes and click this link!
With this not-even-mildly-worksafe device from Japan, he could have had one hand on the wheel, one on the laptop, and was taken care of downstairs.
Thank God for innovation!
Must be something wrong with her driver install because I have no problems with any of my computers and WEP.
WarDriving v. The benign act of locating and logging wireless access points while in motion
:{Shipley}: "Most recently I invented Wardriving, while I am not the first person to go out and search for open wireless LANS (a few before me ventured around with in a with a laptop, pencil & paper manualy scribbling notes). I was first to automate it all with dedicated software and a GPS. When I started this project the usage or WEP was around 15%, after going public with my findings, a year later WEP usage is now 33%. Thus is good to know people are getting the message. Some maps I generated from these exercises can be found at http://www.dis.org/wl/maps/. "
v in g : WarDriving v. The searching for wireless networks by means of a roaming (driving, walking, busing?) wireless client. Sometimes accompanied by a high gain antenna and GPS.
wardriving is not a crime, and it seems that only we as wardrivers know it... the media spreads propaganda that wardrivers are malevolent attackers that we are out to attack and abuse the WiFi-planet )EARTH( and get phree Internet by stealing services; sniffing unauthorized networks in search of passwords; reading your email; blackmailing companies that are not secure... ALL LIES! PROPAGANDA being spread and blindly accepted by governments and its masses... such DISINFORMATION must be rectified!
Use this apparel as a statement for your local wardriving events, conventions, or when just going out to get some lunch. Let the world know you are sick of being compared to terrorists and convicted criminals. Let the world know you are not a pawn in their politics.... This shirt is a top quality Gildian 100% cotton BLACK T-Shirt with silk-screened lettering 'wardriving is not a crime' across the front in white. There are limited quantities of these shirts, shipping in the United States is FREE, outside the US there is a 5.00 Shipping/Handling fee.
Sizes range from Small to XXL for Crew neck, and Small to Large for Babydoll Tee's, and you may order more than one to send to your wardriving friends, spouses, offspring and law enforcement agencies...
wardriving defined:
wardriving v. The benign act of locating and logging wireless access points while in motion. - blackwave
History of WarDriving:
WarDriving was invented by Peter Shipley and now commonly practiced by hobbyists, hackers and security analysts worldwide.
More definitions of WarDriving:
http://www.dis.org/shipley/
http://www.wardriving.com/about.php : War Driving (wor dri'vin) v. 1 Driving around looking for unsecured wireless networks. -term coined by Pete Shipley
http://www.seattlewireless.net/index.cgi/WarDri
What wardriving is NOT:
wardriving is NOT illegal or unlawful in any form or fashion in the United States.
wardriving is NOT about theft of services.
wardriving is NOT about unauthorized access.
wardriving is NOT a crime!
http://www.wardrivingisnotacrime.com/
If you open a second-floot window in my house, walk around the living room, and leave by the same window, you may not have done me or the house any physical harm, but you'd better believe I'm filing charges.
/. posts a story like this, a bunch of folks get on and whine that no one was harmed and that no crime was committed. That's silly. Crimes are defined in the criminal codes. You may disagree sometimes, but your disagreement is no defense in court.
I agree that you don't deserve 10 years in prison for stealing bandwidth, but how about 30 days and a hefty fine?
Every time
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
This makes me wonder if this could be the next spamming technique if it's not already in use? Wardrive through a neighborhood and jack into someone's network and send out spam.
In order to allow my students to listen to music, and because our equipment budget is small and hence we don't have stereo equipment in classrooms, I was forced to, along with several students, carry out an activity in the middle of the pitch black night in the name of education.
That's right -- myself and several students built a ladder and climbed into the window (in a studio nearby) to steal some Tannoy reference speakers and installed them in my third floor office/teaching area.
The students can now freely enjoy high quality sound reproduction, and I for one won't budge. This is no theft, it's all done in the name of education.
I dare somebody to sue me. Oh, and by the way... we use tube amplifiers.
(Sorry, I just couldn't stop myself!)
From news reports I've read law enforcement have had a lot of problems catching child pronographers. Fortunately, it seems some of them have erratic driving skills. Hopefully, the police will pull over a few more of them for driving so poorly!
Especially point B. lameness filter
What? Jerking off while driving down the street reading kiddie porn?
Perfectly normal saith the slasdotter.
Not that Michael Jackson would look anything like his driver's license or passport picture...
Unlike everyone else, i'm not going to go with that line of reasoning, I think they just want to get the law tried out in the courts. Its much better to tack it onto child pornography charges where the odds of it being contested are minimal then to throw it at some h@xx0r who may or may not be able to wiggle out of it. Its always about setting precedent and they want to establish that using an open network w/out explicit permission = theft of service.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
So, if I leave my keys in the car at the gas station and some pervert jumps in, drives away and then uses my car to transport a bale of hard copy kiddie porn, this is my fault?
Here's a better one. Dirtbags do drug deals in your backyard when you're not home. This is your fault?
My personal favorite of all, is it the ISPs fault that kiddie porn crosses his server on the way to the guy's house whose 802.11 network has been hijacked?
In all of the above cases, NUH UH!
To Do:
Send these terms to the boys at the Oxford Dictionary:
WarWacking
WarFapping
One thing that seems to be missing in discussions of Wardiving, SPAM, and other abuses of the net is that we the end users, pay for this with real money. It may be just 1's and 0's to the guy watching it flow past on some server, but its $30/month for me. I have to pay for my connection, assume legal responsibility for the usage, and have to buy the physical equipment to use it (the PC, the cable modem, the software) and I have no problem with some yahoo stealing my service (for whatever data) and getting arrested for doing so. Just as SPAMMERs should be arrested for missuse of government property (to wit, the ARPANET backbone and the backbone connections that we taxpayers have had to pay for and are now crowded by spam.
They should get arrested also for theft by taking of a service. I pay for an email account to receive email from family, friends and business associates, not to receive stupid adds. Unwanted mail is theft of my internet connection, my mailbox space, and my computer resources all of which cost real money and are thus real property of mine that is being stolen.Sure he was asking for it, but notice that "communications theft" did not enter into your description. Driving the wrong way down a one way street is dangerous and he might have hurt someone nice. I'm not sure if it was him fooking with his computer or his other tool that had him driving the wrong way, but obviously he was not up to the task. Fooling with kiddie porn is also nasty because it feeds and encourages the sexual exploitation of children. Sharing someone else's bandwidth? That's not a crime at all.
"Theft of communications" laws are anti-social and unhealthy. In a reasonable society, you could go anywhere you wanted and always be connected to the network. That can only be accomplished if everyone decides to share what they have. Some people don't want to live in a reasonable society, because they have become comfortable charging everyone per minute for communications. Stories like this, assoiciating bandwith sharing with perverts and crackers is their way of raising irrational fears that will keep people from sharing what they have and afraid to share what others give freely. Observe the article:
It's also a way they can invade someone else's computer, which could have serious ramifications for unsuspecting wireless Internet subscribers,. "That means people can use, access and get into your computer, your files and your Internet signal, and if anything illegal was done it would come back to your computer," said Det.-Sgt. Paul Gillespie of the Toronto police child exploitation section.
The levels of ignorance reflected beggar description. It's much easier for crackers to get at and use your computer through normal land based internet services. A bedrock priciple of criminal justice is that people who don't do things are not guilty. I am not to blame for what other people manage to do with my computers. Most obviously, people with perverts driving around their neighborhoods have much larger problems than what that pervert might do with their computer.
I'm glad the police caught this pervert, but I'd like them to stay the hell away from my computer systems. Catching perverts driving the wrong way down the street is good police work. It's even good that they can throw this extra crime at the loser. The law, however, is stupid, anti-social, evil and needs to be repealed.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
This definitely qualifies.
Could it be that PEOPLE WANT TO SHARE THEIR BANDWITH?!!! Golly, from reading old media garbage you would think that everyone was afraid to do something nice for their neighbors. A place where everyone had their wireless up and wanted to share would be a very nice place to be. A place where everyone is paranoid about what perverts might do with their network connection, rather than what that same pervert driving down their street might do to their children, is obviously filled with idiots and bad attitude.
"No Security", my ass. "Security" and peace of mind come from running software that's not easy to crack. With setups like that, you can trust your neighbors and open up the floodgates of communications that are possible but not alowed. Mail servers, web servers, file servers, all the good stuff of information sharing. Sure, some people will abuse it, but those people already abuse your wired network with far greater ease than war driving. Theives and perverts also make use of the phone system and mail.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Does this not, conversly, make it impossible to willingly and freely share your badwith with the world? That sucks. If everyone had wireless and shared it the world would be much nicer.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
It's obviously isn't it ;-)
... It just has to be bigger than a traffic offense.
They charged him immediately with the crimes they could quickly document, like theft of communications, because that way they could hold him until they could gather the evidence for the other charges.
It takes time to go through the forensics process on a laptop's HD while complying with legal rules. For example, before you start paging through images and saying, that one looks underage, you stop looking for more at the first sign of evidence and back up the whole drive (you do, if you're the police, that is). In part this is a step in preserving the chain of evidence. It's also in case the perp has set up some sort of anti-tamper or drive wiping software. You also get an assistant DA or better present for legal advice on what to do next, and log every step of the process. At some point, you may want to lift prints off of the laptop for physical evidence. You may discover evidence in process that requires you notify the FBI (They handle most kidnappings, which often includes missing and exploited children cases).
While you are doing all that, the perp can probably post bail and walk, or may not have to post bail if all you have charged him with is a traffic offense such as going the wrong way on a one way street.
A public indecency charge would probably work, but if you couldn't tell he was naked until you stopped him, might be argueable. And, it never hurts to have a second charge, just in case there's something wrong with the first
The theft of communications law seems clearly violated in this case, and it's sufficient grounds to hold him for long enough to take real care in gathering the evidence for the more serious crimes. If it doesn't stick in the end, you haven't lost much, as the judge will probably make the child porn charges run consecutively.
Who is John Cabal?
In a store you have the logical assumption that the food isnt free.
Similar to if you walk past a TV store, you assume that its free to watch thru the window..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
So was he caught bluejacking? Or was it WAP! :-)
It is in Canada, genius! Better do your snooping elsewhere eh?
And by the way, pinheads like yourself are the reason I have to run ethernet cables all through my house instead of using a nice convenient wireless setup. You're one very short step above the creeps who scan for cellphone numbers and then sell them.
Please find a new hobby. Like subway surfing.
Remember: he's not a wardriver, he's whoredriver.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
The breakdown by common file type is roughly:
The basis for this is about one petabyte's worth of indexed files, so it's not some out-of-thin-air numbers.
Just from this, saying that 42% is porn, much less CHILD porn, is way out. We already knew this, but I thought it interesting to back up the statement with some numbers.
To give more real numbers on child porn, when I did check for it at one time, I found 12 suspicious-looking file names from a database of several million files. That's a LITTLE bit lower than 42%.
And why I still don't recommend it to my users.
Wi-Fi's not ready for prime time. It's terribly open to abuse, especially so for those that live in high density housing. The odds may be low, but it's not worth going to jail or being sued by the RIAA/MPAA for the shenanigans of the guy next door. Run a bit of cable and be done with it.
There will have to be some serious sorting of the encryption issues before I even consider recommending it.
Just in case somebody gets a knee jerk reaction here about those suspicious files: The twelve files in question were not on my hard drive, and never will be, either.
I am talking about files spotted on peer-to-peer networks, where I had an automated process store the file name, size, and some other data in a large database. It was in this database that I later discovered odd-looking file names.
Again, I am not in possession of those files.
Could it be that PEOPLE WANT TO SHARE THEIR BANDWITH?!!!
Highly, highly, highly doubtful. While I certainly can't claim to have done exhaustive studies (or even "asked some dude what he thinks" studies...), I would guess that the vast majority of them simply are clueless about how open their network is, or if they are aware it's more likely open because it's an inconvenience to bother toggling a bit or setting up MAC addresses. Most people have a belief that whatever happens out there, it happens to other people, so someone remorah'ing their connection isn't a possibility.
In my state and locality, there are laws that say that negligence in protecting your possessions means you share the guilt for crimes committed using those possessions. For example, there's a well-established body of law that if you leave your keys in the ignition of a car and someone steals it and runs someone down with it, you are liable for negligence. It has nothing to do with whether you "implicitly" did anything--what you actually did was fail to protect people by properly securing the things you're responsible for securing.
Law is eternally a gray area, but there is a strong argument to be made that people running wide-open are liable for negligence when crimes are committed on those connections.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
The "War Driver" was caught naked from the waist down driving the wrong way down a one-way street, with a laptop in hand.
I bet I know what was in his other hand...
Do you have ESP?
"As3deyt#$seKJ34" is probably a bit too difficult, but your idea of a CD-key type arrangement for the initial SSID/wep key us actually a pretty good idea..
I am a lawyer (unlike many):
1. It is unusual for a judge to order sentences to be served consecutively. The vast majority of sentences are served concurrently. For example, a man charged with stabbing someone with a knife may get 5 years for the stabbing and six months for carrying an offensive weapon. The term he will serve (before remission for good behaviour etc) is 5 years, not 5.5 years.
2. Maximum sentences are not always linked to the time that a convicted defendant would expect to spend in prison. In most Common Law jurisdictions (e.g UK, Canada, Australia, Singapore etc) they are frequently set with a view to giving the police the power of arrest without a warrant. In England (my jurisdiction), if an offence carries a term of 5 years or more, the police do not need a warrant from a magistrate to carry out an arrest. Less than that, they do.
3. The purpose of this particular act is most likely to extend the definition of theft. In England, the Theft Act 1968 defines theft as follows:
"A person is guilty of theft if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it"
This is a pretty common definition. In Roman Law, theft was "the dishonest handling of a thing with a view to gain from its use or possession". This gives an insight into the use of the word "property". Are communications property? In the case of Oxford v. Moss, pure information is not property. A student stole an exam paper, copied it and returned it. He was not guilty of theft. Had he kept the paper, he would have guilty of the theft of the piece of paper and the ink. This is why infringement of copyright is not theft, and the law recognises the hazy area of Intellectual Property.
The effect of this act, then, is to make "communications" another recognised form of property and to criminalise the unlawful appropriation of it.
Congratulations if you've read this far.
--JGL
The Canadians are quick learners: in order to make behavior X illegal, you find a really disreputable behavior Y and associate the two. The US legal system has traditionally used terrorism for this trick, although child pornography has been used as well. Canada seems to be using child pornography for the same purpose.
The guy should be charged with obtaining child pornography and traffic violations. Using open access points, however, should not be illegal: it's far too easy to do accidentally.
In the UK if you had a wireless access point which was used by a third party in this manner to download child porn, particularly if you had your own caching proxy for net access, you would automatically be looking at a two year prison sentence for "possession" of such material. You would have to convince the Crown Prosecution Service otherwise.
Incidentally under UK law as a BOFH, if I were asked as part of my job to investigate a machine the someone said had been used to browse porn and the system contained child porn and I imaged the drive, I would be looking at 10 years in prison for "copying child porn". It's insane - the current situation encourages admins to simply wipe hard drives and say nothing otherwise they risk prosecution. That's just plain wrong.
"It ["Kazaa]'s turned into the largest single way in which like-minded people share and trade child pornography," he said."
"Det.-Sgt. Frank Goldschmidt, from Project P, said the last three child porn collectors his unit arrested also used Kazaa to download porn and stole Internet connections to get online."
They must be making this up. Kazaa exposes the IP address of anyone who makes files available. If anybody was stupid enough to put child pornography files up on it, the police would arrest them that day.
My two Win98 Laptops and 2000 workstations have had no problems using WEP.
Open the client manager, edit the wireless profile, tick the WEP box, enter in key, and viola. (maybe slightly "harder" than the Mac, but no problem figuring out for any reasonably intelligent (i.e. IQ > 80) person)
Oh well, more pro-Mac, anti-PC propaganda
that people belive Michael Moore's propaganda
not to mention that its just bad practice to use one single source to come to a conclusion on ANYTHING
(here is another website debunking Moore)
"Canada's Funniest High-Speed Internet Busts".
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
......BWAHAHAHAHHAHAHAAAAA!!
damn, that's sad. going around without pants on, and a laptop, trying to find an area so he can download child porn to jerk off too.. bwahahhaa.. damn, that's so funny.
Those numbers would seem to add up to 50% (okay, 53%) of all files. So what are "the rest"? WMA and WMV files? HD cruft? Empty filenames? Warez? (I thought that was under "binaries".)
Help me out here, I'm lost.
...Warjacking?
wearing a seatbelt?
Sig it.
They start rolling sideways instead...
A Brit in Tallahassee.
the difference is that when you connect to the wireless network your computer asks for an IP adress. Then it asks to resolve host names when you surf. To enhance the previous analogy, it would be more like your neighbor rings your doorbell and your housekeeper opens the door. Your neighbor then asks if he can borrow your TV, and your housekeeper gives it to him. The fact that you didn't explain the rules to the housekeeper is your problem. How is one supposed to know you didn't really mean to lend it to him? This is different then entering an unlocked house without permission and stealing stuff.
link here
"For all his success at bringing Microsoft's warring constituencies together, there are still things beyond Bill and Steve's control. "I was in a hotel in Sun Valley last week that was not wired," Ballmer recalls. "So I turned on my PC, and XP tells me there is a wireless network available. So I connect to something called Mountaineer.
"Well, I don't know what that is. But I VPN into Microsoft. It worked! I don't know whose broadband I used," he chuckles. "I didn't see it in Bill's room. I called him up and said, 'Hey, come over to my room.' So soon everyone is there and connecting to the Internet through my room."
So was that a crime?
I'm sure most end-users think Mac Address refers to the nearest McDonald's restraunt, not a string of hexidecimal that ethernet cards use.
And this is why they (WAP manufacturers) need to ship the WAPs in a locked up config with a shiny wizard that allows easy adding and removal of cards to the security whitelist.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
That's right! We can't be expected to second guess the WiFi provider's intentions. Even something that is accidentally public is nonetheless public.
Otherwise search engine companies would be prosecuted for providing "deep links."
DISCLAIMER: Not knowing Canadian regulations, my post treats this event from a U.S. perspective only, as it relates to wireless networks here. I'm addressing the network access issue only, not defending kiddie porn, driving naked, or driving in the wrong direction.
As I see it, there was no theft of "communications". He didn't break into any computers, nor block/alter/view data coming in and out of them. There is no indication that he did anything to bypass security measures of either the network or the machines on it. There is no indication that he did nor intended any harm to the network or its users.
He used net connectivity, apparently with all hardware functioning as designed and configured. It is the operator of the network that is responsible for configuration including access permissions. Many run hot spots intentionally, some through ignorance. In either case, the host is functioning as an ISP. What's relevant here is regulation of the wireless access to the ISP.
In the U.S., 802.11b hardware is allowed unlicensed use of spectrum, as regulated by part 15 of the F.C.C. rules. Part 15 products are required to include a notice: "Operation is subject to the following two conditions: (1) this device may not cause harmful interferrence, and (2) this device must accept any interference received, including interference that may cause undersired operation." Harmful interference refers to that affecting licensed communications only. Are there licensed users of this spectrum? Yes.
All ham radio licensees (except Novices) are authorized by the FCC Rules, Part 97.301(a) to use all operating modes in the 2390-2450 MHz band. 802.11b equipment is not allowed to interferre. A ham could reasonably ask anyone using 802.11b gear to stop operating if they cannot otherwise correct an interferrence problem (typically by changing channels, lowering power, reducing antenna height, changing location, using a directional antenna etc). The 802.11b gear operator has no regulatory protection against interference from the ham operator, other 802.11b users, or even microwave ovens which operate in-band at 2450 MHz.
In summary, 802.11b gear is unprotected from interference, and the operator of such gear is on their own to try to make it work as desired, with no guarantee of success.
802.11b hardware is being used as designed when people, known to the host or not, access open networks. It isn't communications theft nor is it tresspassing.
We seen it before with hacking and hackers, but this time the people who recycled the stale old war-blahblah term from the movie WarGames, to WarDialing, and on to WarDriving deserve what they got .. please tell me where in there the term was suddenly respectable? I guess I missed that five minutes. Buy a helmet.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Getting caught with your pants down while driving the wrong way on a one-way street just isn't just a bad idea, it's against the law.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
If they didn't want others using their network, they should disable SSID broadcasting, use MAC filtering and/or WEP encryption. Even really weak WEP makes it clear that you don't want others using your network.
You could make a pretty good argument that a node that broadcasts its presense and doesn't restrict access is an invitation to public use.
If I was king, you'd have to bypass some sort of access restriction (such as breaking WEP or spoofing a MAC address) to be found guilty of anything, especially given the number of people leaving their nodes open specifically to allow public access.
Using someone else's wide-open network is as bad as walking down the street and tossing a wrapper in someone's trash can as it sits on the curb.
What I don't get is why he wasn't charged with reckless driving.
What a pervert...
The "War Driver" was caught naked from the waist down driving the wrong way down a one-way street
Driving the wrong way down a one-way street?
HOW SICK CAN YOU GET?
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
man, what is geekdom coming to?
But at least they didn't seize my computer!
Here's the true lesson: if you wardrive, drive on the correct side of the street.
On another note: Do not look at child pornography. Do not drive with your pants down. If you wardrive, warchalk. If you are a FREAKIN IDIOT DO NOT WARDRIVE!!!!
-illumina+us "I put on my robe and wizard hat..."
But what about windows XP users? If you set XP to automatically handle the wireless network then your computer will automatically use whatever open networks it can find. While I use my own, I've noticed that whenever it is down for some reason, windows searches, finds, and automatically logs into other unsecure networks. Is this my fault? I remeber once downloading an entire set of ISO's using someone elses connection without even knowing it. So who is to blaim here?
a first class trial followed by a first class hangin'
It says we need to look at the problems differently.
Besides, in your example it would be easy to show the supposed breakin occurred repeatedly over a period of time. The defendant could just as easily argue that someone broke into his house and downloaded the materials using his computers. That shows me that you need to provide proof on 24-hour physical security for your computer or it should be comfiscated.
Because of the thrill of being out there vulnerable.
Only difference is he was doing something most consider vile. If was just beating off to garden variety porn, the children here would be singing a different tune.
is that they are easier to secure. No network jack that is physically accessable is a real good front line security. I know that is's not bulletproof but it's a lot harder if the guy has to break into my house first. Theres a price one must pay to use wireless. I will be sticking with my 100Mbps ethernet and live with the "annoyance" of running a jack to anywhere I need internet access.
Got hosting
Bandwidth? You have no explicit permission to come here. You can because it is an offered service on port 80. That's how networks work. If they are open then they are supposed to be offering public services. Picking up unencrypted wi fi access is totally different than cracking the security. Make sure you know the difference when arguing.
no text
I bet it would be ok if he was relaying kiddie porn. Well, he did have his pants down... hrm, half naked man, spams others with his stolen network carrier wave with his pants down. Sources says, well he was only spaming people so it was ok to do.
Anyone care to guess how tired of spam I am?
The "War Driver" was caught naked from the waist down driving the wrong way down a one-way street, with a laptop in hand.
It is important to understand that Canadian one-way signs are smaller than USA one-way signs, so they're easier to miss...
------DO NOT WRITE BELOW THIS LINE------
(2) In order to "steal" internet access via wireless internet, the signal needs to be available. I don't know about your area, but I live in a fairly technologically progressive town, and it's not here except on school campuses. This is probably too obvious to deserve mention here, but still...
"If you leave your front door unlocked - by accident or otherwise - it doesn't grant permission to any passerby to steal your stuff. Yes, you were stupid for leaving your door unlocked. Yes, your insurance might be voided. NO, it doesn't mean you forfeit your property rights."
If you are broadcasting a signal, into other people and other peoples property, it is in no way the same as sombody walking into your house.
If I throw my couch on your lawn, You would have every right to sit on that couch.
If you braodcast a signal, what you are doing is giving it away. Now, if you don't want to give they stuff you are sending all over the neighbor hood, then secure it. It should not be everybody elses responsibility to determine whether or not you mean to be giving it away.
Now, if it clearly indicates that only authorized user can be on it, and asks for a login and password, now it should be illegal to use it, regardles of how trivial the password and login ss secured.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I live in a residential neighborhood. There are no less that SEVEN wireless nodes that pop up on my computer. Three of them have the SSID: "WIRELESS", two have: "LINKSYS" , one says: "DEFAULT" and there's mine that says DJP. How does the average user know which one to hook to? Even if he knows his unit is a Linksys, there's still a 50/50 chance he'll hook to the wrong one. Not to mention the fact that Windows usually connects to the strongest signal automatically. On one of my computers that would be my neighbor's connection on the other side of the wall from where that computer is (as opposed to mine almost 50 feet away). I can see if you're cracking even the most rudimentry encription, but all these ones (except mine) are sitting right out in the open. This law is WAY too broad, as it doesn't discriminate between accidental and deliberate use.
Okay, I won't go there....
Sorry, but accessing a publically accessible access point is by no means theft. It is up to the owner of the AP to take measures to keep the connection inaccessible. Intentionally defeating those access restriction then constitutes theft. The 802.11 wireless gear is all using a shared public resource, the same chunk of spectrum. When I turn on the notebook I do not choose any particular AP. The thing comes on, grabs it's IP address via DHCP an I fully expect this to come from MY AP. End of story. If I pickup something else, too bad. It is not MY responsibility to keep me out of YOUR unmarked publiclly available network, it is YOURS.
I like to compare the internet with transportation, roads in particular. IMHO, all roads are public roads unless otherwise marked or posted. If you don't want me in your driveway place a no trespassing sign in plain view so it can't be missed.
Or an interesting case mod. "It's my aural exciter plug in ..."
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
All sorts of junk.
.h, .c, .ini, .dat, .doc, .ddl, ...
You mention WMA and WMV; these were already counted under audio and video, respectively. Warez are usually under CD Images (ISOs), Executables (EXE, MSI) or Archives (RAR, R01, R02, etc).
To give an example of what "the rest" is, HTML and HTM files are about 5% of the total. DLL and BGL files both come in as slightly more common than ZIPs.
In the "less than 5000 files" category, you find
Overall, there is a huge number of odd files out there. Actually, almost half of them. Looks like most people are sharing installed stuff (to boost their shared-bytes numbers?).
To highlight the odd-files claim, over half of the identified extensions are found on five or fewer files.
because you REQUEST an IP.. and you're GIVEN one.
assuming, of course that this was an open base station, then this is a totally crap decision.
on the child porno charges, deep fry the fscker.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
sometimes it's very handy that people keep their wireless networks open. :)
a few weeks ago we moved into a new office, and of course the phone company was too late with fixing our ADSL connection. So instead of losing two days of work, we could "borrow" the connection from two wireless networks to choose from. One was DHCP and the other I had to sniff the network to find out which IP address I could use
Ricardo.
And I only read the articles!
paintball
CURTIS RUSH
STAFF REPORTER THESTAR.COM
A man spotted by police driving naked from the waist down with a laptop computer on the passenger seat is facing numerous child pornography charges.
On Wednesday at 5 a.m., Toronto police found a driver going the wrong way on a one-way street in a residential area.
On the screen of the laptop computer was an image of a young girl performing a sex act on an older man.
The laptop had a wireless adapter card (known as a WI-FI card) allowing the accused to access the Internet through any insecure wireless Internet signal (known as War Driving)
.
Members of the Child Exploitation Section of the Sex Crimes Unit were called in.
An investigation revealed that the man also had been downloading child pornography using KaZaa, a peer-to-peer file sharing program and had been posing as a younger man in chat rooms to meet young girls.
A search warrant was executed at the suspect's home where 10 computers and hundreds of compact discs containing hundreds of thousands of images and movies of child pornography were recovered.
Charged with several pornography charges as well as a charge of theft of telecommunications to make child pornograophy was Walter Nowakowski, 35, of Delhi.
Police believe it's the first time anyone has faced theft of telecommunications charges because of a wireless Internet signal.
The accused is in custody and will appear in court Monday for a bail hearing.
As you can see I don't care about my karma.
>And by the way, pinheads like yourself are the reason I have to run ethernet cables all through my house instead of using a nice convenient wireless setup.
:-)
Actually, in Canada, it isn't pinheads like him. It's the law. Ask Industry Canada -- if you can pick it up, and it's not encrypted, it's your right to listen to it (or view it). It's a basic tenent of Canadian law that helps separate us from Americans.
Now, as far as selling cellphone numbers, that's not legal (you can't make use of the information gathered). But just scanning for them, that's probably ok, but a good way to get yourself needlessly investigated. No, IANAL.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Wouldn't it be more illuminating to score those by bytecount? How do those categories break down by bytecount?
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
No, but imagine when they arrested this guy. It says he way naked from the waist down with a computer in his lap. I imagine Officer Bob and Officer Jim happened by. Officer Bob says "Alright, you pervert, you're goin' downtown. Jim, handcuff him!" "No way, freak, YOU handcuff him!"
In SOVIET RUSSIA, a beowulf cluster of these imagines YOU.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
It's not propaganda, it's truth. Open the client manager, edit the wireless profile, tick the WEP box, enter the key (double-check it), and voila, it can't see anything on the network!
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
We all agree here that the story is ridiculous. But it seems to me that the journalists are just adding to that, not making it clearer.
:) ;) "Police child exploitation section" - I though those guys were supposed to serve and protect, not to exploit the kids... :-) Is there even a thing such as an old child?
1) What the hell is "Sun media", is it even remotedely similar to "Sun" in the UK?
2) "watching a movie on his laptop of a 10-year-old girl performing fellatio on an adult" - how does this scribbler know about that? Does the police tells this kind of info at press conferences? How do they know the age? I smell bullshit.
3) "Stealing Internet, or War Driving as it is sometimes called, is becoming more and more common among perverts trying to avoid online detection." and "A man... has become the first man in Toronto charged for allegedly stealing an Internet connection." - well, how do they know about all that perverts if they have only busted one?
4) This quill-driver thinks that saying "allegedly" a lot allows him to write any kind of crap... Sadly, it seems to be true.
5) The movie can easily be closed by pressing Alt+F4, takes only about a second. Unless the policeman run to the car and busted the door open, I don't think the cop had a chance to see it playing. I mean, even my parents don't usually manage to catch me watching movies of 10-year-old girls performing fellatio on adults - and they only have to open the door.
6) As a side note, I like the department name.
7) "They recovered 10 computers and thousands of CDs and floppy disks" - yeah, sure. We have a guy who can break into wireless networks and he still stores images on floppies. Puuuhhlease! Not to mention that even one thousand of CDs is one terabyte of data, which is fucking huge. People who can collect that much child porn, don't usually drive naked, while watching child porn and masturbating. Ergo, the scribbler is probably lying again.
8) "It involves some of the worst child pornography that we've ever seen" and "it's becoming typical of what we're seeing" - that's in the same paragraph. Can't you at least decide whether it is the worst or something you see every day?!
9) "child pornography... including young children and babies". Well, I thought the point of child porn was that it features young children.
Some of these concernes may be unwarranted, but overall the story reads just like a million or so of stories about scary paedophiles (although I applaud the officer for using the words "like-minded people" instead of "evil paedophile scum").
Some more info about Internet child porn: original version and a censored version at Wikipedia.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Imagine this: I am walking by your house one day, and I am cold, so I try your door, find it unlocked, and come sit on your couch for an hour to warm up. This probably wouldn't cost you anything in lost heat because my body generates warmth, but wouldn't it creep you out a bit?
I find more compelling the argument that the trespassing paradigm is wrong, and that a public contract model is more appropriate: specifically, anybody with government permission to beam electromagnetic signals through other people's bodies should have an obligation to provide something to the public in return for that permission.
I fail to see the analogy between stealing someone's property and using the broadcast signal. Was the [alleged] victim telling everyone who passed by, or yelling out loud (broadcasting) that anyone could have her purse if they wanted to? Then it would not be stealing if someone took her up on her offer.
You are more or less touching on my point.
Many of the anolgies being used are all flawed in the sense that they require you to do something (Plug into an extension cord, steal a purse, live in someone else's house).
None of these analogies hold up with a wifi network because with said network, all one has to do to gain access to an unsecured one is just to be there. There isn't any access, you don't have to do anything.
Thus if someone doesn't want people on their network, they should damn well secure it, otherwise it's fair game. Additionally, it's unfair to assume that people will even know how to disable their network connection, even if they realized, "hey, I have a connection right now and I know it's not mine."
This is not a case of someone leaving their front door unlocked, so "that means I can move in", or whatnot. This is a case of someone making a wireless network that has some radius of connectivity. They know that everyone within that radius will have a connection regardless, unless they secure it. If they choose not to secure it, then they are choosing to allow people access to it.
How could I say to men: "Speak louder, shout! For I am deaf!"? -Ludwig van Beethoven
in most of the incidents in question, the tires didn't fail until after the vehicle was rolling over, anyway
We've secretly replaced Slashdot with new Folgers Crystals - let's see if it notices.
How do I know that the unsecured AP I'm using isn't unsecured on purpose? In addition to the hundreds of advertised free hot spots, there must be thousands of unadvertised ones that were left unsecured precisely so passing users could borrow some bandwidth. [Whether, given the context of this arrest, that's a smart thing to do is a moot point.]
The law is severly fucked up when it come to technology related crimes. Laws are often written by people who have no clue about the technology they are regualting.
If someone decides to make their access point PUBLIC, then they are giving everyone permission to use it. They configure the SSID, channels, etc, and then they come to the box asking them if they want encryption. If they click "no", their access point will inform everyone in their neighbourhood that it can be used by them.
Access should be regulated via encryption and user accounts - not via the law. Computer hacking is illegal in many countries - and I believe this is wrong. If I can access a high-profile company WLAN from a laptop, while parked on the street, it means the system administrator is incompetent. If they don't want the public having access, they should tick the damn box rather than pursuing everyone with legal action.
F4ck war drivers, f4ck them to hell. There is a perception among slashdotters that wardriving is what l33+ h4xx0r5 do. That is bullshit. I've seen them around the city, downtown, looking for company networks to 'map', and I'd just love to have a big f4cking electro-magnet handy to 'map' their laptop.
I have a PCI Wireless card with a Prism chipset and running the HostAP drivers. It serves as one hella Access Point. I allow port 80 to connect through squid. I log MAC addresses and sites visited. I do this as a service to anyone that might be cruising through the neighborhood looking for bandwidth. I have had noone abuse this yet. If I do have an abusive user then a MAC address ban will stop most users.
I Don't Work Here
Wow! I wonder if they told the owner (s?) of the Internet connection he was using?
I wonder if they told the ISP of the owner(s) of the connection(s). Might they not be alerted by blatant illegal porn access on their network (why else wardrive, if nobody is watching you in the first place), and go after the owner of the connection that the WiFi is sourced from.
Obviously you have reason to doubt me, since your personal experience runs contrary. Should you have the resources to check with someone in the power generation industry: Apparently the two houses, though next door neighbors, were on seperate power systems.
I don't know how divided the power systems were, but apparently the division was rather significant. It's possible I'm wrong about phase being the defining difference.
The particular gentleman who was speaking with me is, as I stated before, responsible for turning off and on people's power, and I've verified this to my own satisfaction.
I shall ask him for complete details of the incident and why it caused problems, and relate such to you.
As to the veracity of that particular story, I have no reason to doubt him, as it was in the midst of a very long discussion of how to steal resources from neighbors and the problems therein. I'm not a thief, nor do I intend to be. I am in the process of purchasing my first house, and he was kind enough to relate some things I might want to look out for, to avoid being the victim of theft.
Given the context, I shall be happy to share some of the incidents he's seen, since you've been kind enough to relate your own experiences.
It seems that there are two different strategies, in general, for stealing utilities. It is very good to be familiar with both, because you might be getting robbed. YOU MIGHT ALSO BE UNKNOWINGLY STEALING BY INHERITING A THEFT SYSTEM. If so, it's far better to correct it on your own, or inform your utility, than it is for them to find it and contact you.
General division of theft tactics:
#1 Cause your meters to read incorrectly.
#2 Steal it from your neighbor.
#1 Water: Normally it's done by going upstream of the meter. With the water company, the lines are leaky enough that you'll probably not get caught until somebody bumps into your line.
If you're simply determined to steal utilities outright, this is probably your best hope.
#1 Electricity: You can go upstream of your meter by splicing into the lines on the backside of the conduit against your building, upstream of the meter. Unfortunately, the more you take, the more likely you are to get caught. The power company checks historical records automatically, and will investigate any significant downward change. The power company also tracks where unmetered line losses go, and can isolate it to your feed. And they will if it's significant.
The problem with effectively stealing is that the punishment definetly outweighs any potential benefit. The more you take, the closer they will look.
#1 Natural Gas: Don't even think about it. Gas companies very closely track leaks in the lines, because such are extremely hazardous.
Detection: Shut off your gas using appliances for a couple of hours while it's cold and see if the meter keeps going. If it does, the gas is going SOMEWHERE. Possibly a leak, possibly a neighbor. Checking is highly advised, and your gas company will be very willing to help.
#2 Electricity: If you're going to steal the neighbor's electricity, run it on a different circuit. If you plug it into your own circuit, a bad wiring job could cause large problems. This route is safest if you're in an apartment building, since it's highly unlikely you'd get the different flavor problems that inspired this sub-thread.
Detection: Shut off main breaker power sometime in the early evening while all the neighbor's houses are lit up. Listen for loud swearing and look for sudden darkness. Watch the power meter, it should go to zero (I don't remember if it will stop dead or just start to creep very slowly. I think the meter itself uses a trickle). If it keeps spinning, call the power company.
Apparently it is EXTREMELY common for both sides of a dividing wall between apartments or offices to be on one meter. You also get lazy contractors, or unscrouplous landlords, who subdivide one unit into two and don't b
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
Listening isn't really the problem I'm referring to. I can easily enough encrypt the packets to make them hash to the listener, in fact you can buy systems that do it themselves. The crime here is not listening, although that is certainly bent enough.
No, the crime is usurping somebody's Internet connection. If I want to be -really sure- nobody is fiddling with my connection, and particularly pretending to be me while doing something immoral or illegal, I have to run cable. The disgusting perv in the parent article was downloading kiddie porn, but he could just as well have been UPloading the next big virus, which will bring the RCMP to MY house, which I for sure don't want.
And why? Because DICKBOY here wants to run around Wardriving and boast about it to his other dickweed friends where actual bad people can read about it. Criminals are for the most part stupid, so they don't invent these kinds of tools for themselves. They let enthusiastic idiots like Wardriver.com do all the work, then pervert the finished product.
Besides all the paranoia, *I* paid for this connection. If I want to let passers by use it I'll put up a sign. The Canadian government's casual attitude toward personal property and an individual's freedoms is what -really- separates us from the Americans. I had more rights and freedoms as an immigrant in the USA than I do as a citizen in Canada.
>Besides all the paranoia, *I* paid for this connection. If I want to let passers by use it I'll put up a sign. The Canadian government's casual attitude toward personal property and an individual's freedoms is what -really- separates us from the Americans. I had more rights and freedoms as an immigrant in the USA than I do as a citizen in Canada.
Uhhh, just to let you know, it was COPS (the American TV shows) that originally gave me the impetus to look up tresspass law.
It's the same in the US. Unless you let the person know, it's considered public property. And that's how it should be. Anything else would be oppressive.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC