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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!"
Say you're using their connection to do some illegal stuff like black hat hacking or spam fraud and the IP gets traced back to your neighbors, then what?
Or simpler; a forum which you both happen to visit decides to ban the IP for your bad behaviour or a poll-system allows only one vote per IP.
The real problem is not using the bandwidth, it's the online identity theft through use of their IP.
And how about a VPN? Is it okay to access that too through the WiFi connection?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Personally, I leave my wireless network deliberately open, and the login message (when seen) says "welcome to...". I do this in a public minded spirit, in the hope that if I need a public network in some other place, some other kind soul will leave one open as well.
Fixed computers actually on my network are individually firewalled off.
If I ever find evidence of massive bandwidth leeching, I may change my policy, but even then I would prefer to simply cap non-me connections.
Morally, I don't feel it is wrong to borrow enough bandwidth off an open wifi node to read a few web pages or collect email.
Massive bandwith leeching, copyright theft or invading someone else's samba shared files via an open network (that they probably intended to be network private) are off limits, of course.
These days, I would hope that people are aware that these things are open by default - there have been enough articles in the major newspapers about it, and certainly I would prefer that hardware manufacturers shipped them in a default secure configuration, but I don't think this should prevent people leaving them open if they want to.
If i leave a plate of biscuits (cookies) just inside the open gate to my garden with a sign saying "take one please", is it a crime for someone to take one?
Some geeks have attempted to hijack
Bullshit, there is no hijacking involved! Frikin walk up to the curb, open laptop, and use it. Do you need permission to turn on the TV and watch open air TV shows? How about 'permission to view' the flowers in front of my house? If people are too ignorent to use a piece of hardware, they shouldnt purchase it. Read the frikin big printed poster that shows you how to secure your access point. Otherwise, you deserve what you get.
No I didnt spell check this post...
Geeks need to get out of the habit of assuming that a default configuration amounts to "permission to use". It doesn't. Only permission to use is permission to use. The only surefire way to know if you have permission or not to use a network is to look for a publically posted notice, or to get written or oral permission from the network's owner. One day, 802.11* might have something added to make it easier to make it possible for a user to unambigiously give other's permission to use their networks (and that would be a useful feature anyway), but until then, look for notices, or talk to the operator. Don't assume.
That wireless routers ship unsecured in their default configuration is a problem with the vendors (and it wasn't always like this). Vendors do this to make it easier for people to setup their first wireless network... in fact it's basically automatic. Any Windows machine with a wireless card will automatically connect to any unsecured wireless access point. Period. Allow me to repeat this. Any Windows machine with a wireless card will automatically connect to any unsecured wireless access point. But people really do need to log in and change the default configuration, both for security purposes (it's trivially easy to find default passwords online), and functionality reasons. But the biggest reason is that the way to say something is available for use in the online world is to allow people to use it without authentication.
The standard way of saying something is open and available on the 'net is to not require a password. If you put your pictures up on your http site even if you don't publish the link anywhere you're giving your consent for people to connect and look at your pictures. Not just your consent... your hardware, which is your stand-in online, is actively doing it. The moment you put a password on your http site, you're showing that the site is private, and attempts to enter can be considered hacking. If you have an FTP site with no password, you're giving people permission to use it. Open chat servers, bulletin boards, p2p nodes... The universally accepted convention about networking protocols is "open unless locked." I don't need to call you and get your explicit permission to connect to your website if it isn't locked... by not having a password on something you are showing that it is available for all to use. This post bounced through 20 or so routers at various locations throughout the world, but I didn't need to get explicit permission to use any of them. I didn't have to: I had implicit permission built into the hardware's choice of protocol.
Likewise, if you have networking hardware that has no password or protection whatsoever, you're giving people permission to route through it. In fact, hardware you own is more than facilitating it... it's broadcasting its SSID, it's responding to my card's MAC address, it's responding to my session handshake, and it's not asking for authentication. That's no less than four steps along the line when it could have simply and trivially stopped anyone whom the owner didn't want on the network. The hardware actively engaged in the process. This isn't like checking everyone's door to see which is unlocked, this is like walking past a building downtown and having the glass door automatically open for you.
I should also say that lots of people do intentionally share their wireless networks, out of a sense of social support. There are several 802.11b networks permeating my apartment right now, several of which have altered SSID's and configurations but which are unlocked all the same, showing that the owners knew enough to change the configuration of their routers but still chose to leave them unlocked. This turned out to be good for me, as I had been unintentionally connecting to a neighbor's wireless network for about 1/2 of a year... My wireless card had a faulty WEP driver, and for half a year I didn't notice that it would fail to connect to my network and automatically went out and found another
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