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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!"
As has been mentioned on /. on several times before when this particular case came up, this guy didn't accidentally or "automagically" attach to his neighbour's wifi network: he sat outside their house, in his car, and acted very suspiciously when they walked past (e.g. snapping his laptop shut). He'd been doing this over a three month period. To my mind his punishment was more a result of his behaviour than mere connection to some idiot's wide open wireless network.
we should all open up public aps, log the connections and send law enforcement large lists of mac addresses of 1337 h4x0rs...
that might cause them to reconsider how they enforce the law.
Get your torrents...
``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.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Sigh. You know you're on Slashdot when anything bad, no matter how remote, gets blamed on Windows and/or Microsoft.
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!
Hey, you use your car for maybe an hour each way to work. It's being wasted the rest of the day. Fair that I grab it without you knowing in between then?
Of course not. Anything you decide to do becomes their problem. And, well, it's just rude! If it's one of the low cap broadband connections, perhaps you're going to push them over their limit? Or several people using it will do that?
Still alright to cost them money?
All it takes is a nip round to your neighbour's place and say "Look, you've got a wireless point there and broadband.. Mind if I chuck you a bit of cash each month and piggyback on top of the link, 'cos I can't really afford it?". Many would say to just hop on anyway if it's not used, without you paying anything. That's certainly the arrangement I have with my neighbours that can't afford the link (now have 3 people on mine).
Nothing wrong with sharing a link, it's just good manners to ASK before taking things.
Wrong. It's more like going up a private road which isn't marked as a private road, and which you have contacted Google to tell them to put it on their maps. Don't want people to go driving up your private road? Put some signs up or a gate.
It's very simple - put WEP or WPA on. To be honest, if someone goes through your WEP, then that counts as a deliberate break-in in my book. If you don't have it no, don't complain when people go using it.
>>So if you have your door open in summer, I'm welcome to walk into your house and help myself to some of the cookies that are on the kitchen table?
Bad analogy - that would involve tresspass; there is a physical boundary of someone else's property that implies private access.
A better analogy would be if those cookies were floating through the air, coming in MY window and out my door, and I happened to eat a few as they went by.
Although it may not reflect the law, I personally believe that unsecured wifi should be public domain. WEP (even 1-bit for god's sake, to show that the intention for it to be private) should be enabled by default on routers, and it should be blatantly clear that you're providing public access (with consent) if you turn it off.
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
"Fortunately, most courts still discriminate between intentionally and accidentally doing something. "
Except for one thing, you can't know if he neighbours INTENT was to share his open wireless connection for sharing. Thats the whole point of Open WiFi afterall, sharing. By doing this they're making Open WiFi illegal, because not only does your computer have to get permission to connect to the network (via the login) but now extra permission is needed too.
Let me put it another way. Suppose you have free open municiple wifi and Fred Bloggs open wifi, you computer has no way of telling which is the free Municiple open wifi and which is not so it connects to Fred Blogs's net, attempts to login and is given permission -> crime comitted. You had the intent to connect to an open network, but not the method to determine which network is permitted.
Or rather you did have the way, the login, but the court ignored that.
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?
...the door is unlocked = no encryption, no security.
...turning the handle gives access to anyone that tries - the router hands out IPs to anyone that asks.
...the door can be locked very easily - the WiFi network can be configured to deny access easily.
...accidentally opening the neighbour's unlocked door = Windows automatically connecting to a WiFI network
You know that most people do not intend to let everyone use their WiFi, any more than they want everyone to use their house when the door is unlocked. Most of them are poorly configured (typically, default SSID/password), and you know that 99%+ of all residential ISPs don't allow them to run a public hotspot.
Consider it something like garden furniture, even though it's not under lock and key it is still mine to use. If I don't sit in it, you still don't have any right to the unused "bandwidth". And don't give me the "reading in your light" argument, because using my network consumes my bandwidth. If I have a download running, you are slowing me down.
If you really are a free hotspot it is trivial to indicate that you are in your SSID. Otherwise the only thing you have is a very thin argument that since you can use it, it must be free. It certainly has no truth in the physical world, and hardly in the electronic world either. Just because I misconfigure a server to make an open relay/proxy/service, doesn't imply permission. Not if you have good reason to understand that this isn't intentional. You can play really stupid, but no court will let you get away with it.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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?
No. The fact that your door is unlocked doesn't mean that I can walk into your house. When on earth did "This object let me do it" become a standard of legality?!
Since the cash register gave me money when I hit the button, that 7-11 burglarly couldn't possibly be illegal. Since the car left running at the curb allowed me to drive it, my car theft cannot be illegal.
That standard of permission doesn't even apply to people! ("I wasn't violating the restraining order, her brother let me in!") Since when does it apply to inantimate objects?
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
" ...the door is unlocked = no encryption, no security."
Man 1: "Knock knock",
Man 2: "Come in",
Man 1: Goes in.
Man 2: Police arrest that man.
Man 1: But I knocked and you said I could come in
Man 2: But that was a misconfiguration, if I wanted you to come in I would have put a "FreeToComeIn" sign on my door.
You might be thinking about the Cambridge Two.