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Wardriving Worries Residents
sphynx99 writes "This article describes how residents of an upscale neighborhood in Arizona are worried about wardriving, a "new method of privacy intrusion and identity theft". Nothing to worry about, though; "The Scottsdale Police Department plans to create a cyber-crimes unit next year."
Scottsdale residents are concerned people are looking into their homes when their blinds are open. Police plan to start a blind closing service.
Heaven forbid they setup their networks properly and save taxpayers thousands upon thousands of dollars. Why be responsible when you can just whine to the government?
purely passive wardriving is NOT a crime.
now connecting to their access point and using their internet/network for whatever... that might be, i am not a lawyer, so i cannot say. what i do know is that RF signals are not owned, for if they were i could sue for criminal trespass when the other guy's signals cross my property.
Instead of wasting tax payers' money, they should just use wired lans.
Why should the poor pay taxes to subsidize all these extra expenditure made for the sake of those who are wealthy?
I'm talking about those in the bottom of the scrap heap here. Those who don't even have computers, Joe Sixpacks.. like.. Homer!
Now, why would Homer have to pay more taxes so that Burns can have a safe wireless lan?
Those people who buy a wireless router should pay for a tax at time of purchase!
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
residents of an upscale neighborhood in Arizona are worried about wardriving
Geeks living in that area should consider advertising their services. Improving computer security and making money while doing it sounds like win-win situation to me.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
If you choose to live in a glass house, when blinds are cheap, you for-go the right to bitch about people looking in on you. An ounce of prevention goes a long way. Now, if a hacker breaks your encryption and your MAC filtering, then you can complain.
Obviously PigPen could have ignored me. Or told me to go check myself. There was no requirement he answer my query. Same goes for any transaction that happens on the public airwaves -- like the wireless networking bands. I'll go so far as to say that MAC spoofing, or hacking the WEP key is definately wrong... But unless an open network is considered to be open am I liable if my linksys wireless nic connects to your default-settings linksys wireless hub instead of my default-settings linksys wireless hub?
I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
its whether the communication is conducted via a method the user has a "reasonable expectation of privacy" using
That's a standard that the existance of the concept of wardriving shoots a nice big hole through...
A wide-open 802.11x access point can be seen as an open invitation onto that network. Afterall, there are many public places that intentionally set their networks to be wide open in order to encurage use by visitors/customers.
The lack of intent doesn't have much to do with it... if you set up a wide open network, you're giving an internationally recognized signal. One should know the customs of what they're dealing with lest they unintetionally make such a signal.
You need a few gigabytes of packets to crack WEP. The way most people use their wireless networks I wouldn't worry too much. Also, if you change your WEP once a week (or more often if you use it extensively) you are pretty much safe.
The only risk you have is your neighbour (no sane person will wait for a gig outside your house).
MAC-filtering can also be effective, although you could still suffer a DoS attack from someone who has cracked your WEP, but that's just a friendly remainder to change your WEP.
Of course, the best would be to use WPA[2] combined with a logon service like NoCatAuth, where you effectively kill all routing unless they authenticate.
For Joe Schmoe WEP suffices.
Just think, people don't really know how to fix their own cars, but they know enough to know what sorts of problems might crop up, and more importantly, enough to do what needs to be done to maintain their cars reasonably well within the limits of what they, as nonexperts, can do. The only reason people know this is that there has been a culture passed from one person to the next of this kind of practical knowledge. Maybe some geeks should do their part to help disseminate the (frankly not very extensive) knowledge necessary to secure home wireless networks.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
I post my wireless research here. http://mb.citiwireless.com/
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Have Fun,
-Steve
Huhhhh, I said marriage. http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=marriage%2 0AND%20mediatype%3Amovies