Wireless Hijacker Dealt First UK Punishment

paella_dodger writes "The BBC is reporting on a recent UK court case whereby a man was fined £500, sentenced to 12 months' conditional discharge and had his laptop confiscated for browsing the 'net on his neighbour's wireless Internet conenction. Perhaps I should secure my neighbour's wireless connection for him before Windows automagically connects to it and gets me arrested!"

Comments

Re:In Perspective...

[Breakfast Pants]

Wrong guy, different case, and hell, different country even.

Justice

[RAMMS EIN]

``before Windows automagically connects to it and gets me arrested''

Fortunately, most courts still discriminate between intentionally and accidentally doing something. If you're connecting to someone else's wireless network from your car (which, I assume, means that you don't have any wireless network facilities of your own around), it's pretty hard to maintain that you did it by accident.

On the other hand, if my mom is found to use the neighbor's network to access the Internet, it will be pretty hard to maintain that she was doing so on purpose. All she knows is that computers can be used as glorified typewriters. GUIs are not for her, much less wireless network configurations.

Accident?

[malkavian]

Not really. Despite the BBC hedging it's bets, and putting the conspiracy angle on it a touch, The Register has a clearer account of what happened.
Basically the bloke was engaged in Wardriving, and deliberately hooked into the wireless network.
It'll certainly be murky waters when windows automatically selects the average joe's router instead of their own, but with many routers at least asking people to put better security on wireless points, this should start becoming less frequent.
From all accounts, he was caught tapping away on his laptop, moved away when police watched, then came right back to the same point again. At which point he was investigated as he looked a little 'suspicious'.
Wardrivers remember! Just because you're invisible in the network, it doesn't make you invisible to the local copper walking on the street, or the local neighbourhood watch!

Re:Accident?

[malkavian]

Actually, considering I work in an NHS hospital, there are very good reason why you don't use their open wireless, and you tell 'em FAST it's there.
Patient records. If you're a nice guy, you won't go looking around. Not everyone is that nice. Ever thought what happens when you delete someone's allergy records when they head to surgery?
We have wireless points here, and regularly go sniffing for open access points run by departments. When we find them, we chastise the owners, and then secure the points.
Or, perhaps, you're happy sharing your medical history with the world. If so, that's fine. Not everybody is.
Incidentally, I'm very suspicious of your claim to read /. from the internal network via an open wireless access point. Simply because the proxies need authentication (it's part of NHSNet's rules). If you don't have the domain account configured for internet access.. Then you're internal only. And you really shouldn't be there.

Re:Intentional doesn't mean criminal

[NigelJohnstone]

"The name should tell you if it's a known company or called 'FREEANDUSEME'. "

Except there's no convention for matching an SSID to a usage condition. So 'FreeOnMondayNights' might mean the guy wants a date on mondays or his computer is free on mondays or his wifi is free.....

You can't know from the SSID what the conditions of usage for that network are.

Take another example, you try to connect to "MiksNetwork" and it connects, but you are not sure if Mik really wanted it that way. How the fuck are you supposed to know who Mik is, how you get permission from him, or who has authority to give you permission. His network says it OK, yet you're supposed to assume it still isn't?

Re:Did you read this bit....

[csrster]

You might be thinking about the Cambridge Two.