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Turning Network Free-Riders' Lives Upside Down
An anonymous reader writes "You discover that your neighbours are using your unsecured wireless network without your permission. Do you secure it? Or do you do something more fun? A few minutes with squid and iptables could greatly improve your neighbours' Web experience ..." Improve is a relative term, but this is certainly gentler than certain other approaches.
I'm surprised the guy didn't send every link to goats.ex... He was being way too nice.
What are the odds that a neighbor would use your network and then sue you for the content that your are sending to him?
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
How can you blame people for connecting to a wireless router with the ID "Free Porn"?
Granted, my neighbors didn't intentionally set their router up with that ID but they did leave it unsecured with the default password for the admin account. It was simply the neighborly thing to do to change their ID and resecure it with a new password (that, admittedly, they didn't know).
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Could just watch their traffic, and when they try to bid on ebay, just slow their traffic down, then out bid them. They'll rue the day they tried to outbid 'yourneighborfromhell' on ebay.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
One of my all-time favorites. :)
(Mootar) morons.
(Mootar) these people who live in my apartment complex are connected to my wireless
(Mootar) they must think they're super-cool hackers by breaking into my completely unsecure network
(Mootar) unfortunatly, the connection works both ways
(Mootar) long story short, they now have loads of horse porn on their computer
http://bash.org/?202477
Bugs are just features that have been fixed.
It's as much stealing as sending the signal into their home is trespassing.
I think you just shake your head at your failure to secure it in the first place, decide if you care, and if you do, lock it down.
Funny way to deal with it, though.
But can you imagine Joe Sixpack trying to explain to Pradeep that all the images in his web pages were being displayed upside-down (or better yet, blurry, or upside-down and blurry!), while all the text in the very same web pages was being displayed upside-right in crystal clarity?
Joe Sixpack probably doesn't know the differences between images and text. Pradeep would hear the word "upside down" or "blurry" and immediately think it was a hardware problem.
It'd probably take any of us half an hour to convince a second-tier tech that we weren't trolling him, never mind Joe Sixpack.
I'd give my left nut to hear the support calls on this. (Particularly as I'm pretty sure that those of you in tech support have no use for my left nut. :)
Improve is a relative term, but this is certainly gentler than certain other approaches.
I don't really see the point. It's funny as a practical joke. In terms of protecting your network... why not just secure it instead?
Calling someone on slashdot dumb - mostly free.
Making a dumb mistake while calling someone dumb - priceless.
It's impossible to steal unprotected wifi. If you leave your connection unprotected, that means you are purposely sharing it. Although flipping the pictures upsidedown is pure genious.
For those that are struggling to understand how the author of this article is accomplishing his approach, here is some further information.
The author obviously has a Linux server in his house, that is running DHCPD
To selectively send some clients to some locations, and others to the normal internet, he assigns an IP address on a different network to clients that don't have MAC Addresses that he knows about.
Forwarding on to sites of his choice is done by using IPTables, which is a utility that allows you to configure the packet filtering components of the Linux TCP/IP Stack. In this instance, the Linux box is just functioning as a firewall, and he is selectively sending requests from certain IP addresses to different hosts of his chosing.
Finally, the Up-side-down and blurry-image conversions is accomplished by sending page requests from those before-mentioned IP addresses to a proxy server, which in this case is Squid - and then allowing the proxy server to run a script which calls an ImageMagick command called mogrify which allows you to resize an image, blur, crop, despeckle, dither, draw on, flip, join, re-sample, and much more.
And that folks, is the rest of the story.
Lindsay Blanton
RadioReference.com
sorry, I am a supporter of open networks. I think the freifunk olsr-protocol approach of open wireless networks is best. We don't need internet providers and we don't need internet provider which leak our communication data to the governments and endanger the freedom of the net. The net should be a net and wireless technology is great for the creation of a real P2P internet.
I cannot support any action against people who use your network. It is against my understanding of hacker ethics. When you don't like it then close your network. But no childish games please.
I may even say that I find it unethical to exclude your neighbours from using your network but I respect your opinions. When your network is open it means: Be free to use it. Not: You can use it but I will fuck up or intercept your communication.
At first, I thought there were way too many screenshots. I mean, ok, we get it. But then at the bottom of the FA, it pays off. After the dumb kitten and upside-down stuff (where they know someone is fucking with them) we get to the treasure: blurry-net. That's subtle and I love it. The ideal prank for the proverbial Man In The Middle would be to do things to confuse the endpoints, not merely annoy them.
The next step is to spy on them and see what websites they visit, and then insert some fake content one day. For example, if they use it to read CNN, insert a casual story about a nuclear weapon getting used in the Middle-East or South Asia, or a story about the president of USA selecting a new vice-president due to the assassination last week ("What?! I didn't hear about that!"), or the CDC in Atlanta is investigating the recent rash of improbable claims about the dead returning to life to feast on the flesh of the living, etc. If they visit Slashdot, then the jig is probably up, but maybe it would be great to have a story where a security study found Windows98 to kick OpenBSD's ass and then a bunch of comments where everyone agrees that the findings pretty much match their own experience, along with complains about "how is this news for nerds?!"
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
by leaving it open he is inviting other people to connect.
Some computer says to the router "Hey, can I come in?" and the router says "Sure". Now, the moment you put something up, like needing a password, then you are no longer inviting people in.
Computer says "Hey, can I come in" router says "Sure, if you know the password."
Or you can encrypt it
Computer says "Hey, can I come in?" the router says "KE*jd7638JDEJE*834899(&^&#nd&#&bd*e#"
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Network freeloaders put themselves at risk... It would be trivial for someone to set up a "Free Internet" wireless AP and then run phishing attacks, sniff IM conversations, e-mail, etc. Considering how little the average internet user even pays attention to SSL, one could very easily imitate a bank, ebay, paypal, etc... One should certainly think twice before freeloading on someone's wireless network - and if you do, at least tunnel your connection securely (even socks5 over an SSH tunnel, etc)..
That was a terrible poem.
No, it's not implied. As the law stands, it's illegal unless you get something more explicit in terms of permission. Yes, illegal. Yes, people have lost in court. No, not civil court, criminal.
(And it makes sense that no implied permission is given by simply having your router be unsecured, given "unsecured" is the default configuration of most off-the-shelf routers.)
It really isn't an issue in practice. If you want to use someone else's network, all you have to do is ask them. With 802.11, you're close enough to be able to do so. There's no reason not to ask, other than knowing that "no" is likely to be the answer. And I think that's why people tell themselves the myth that somehow they have implied permission simply because the "door" was left unlocked.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
The analogy is not flawed. So the router is "visible", with an option to make it invisible. Big deal. My garden is visible from the street, but I can put a tarp around it to obscure its existence. What you are saying is that, unles I put a tarp up around my garden, everyone has a right to use it.
Wireless networks may make themselves conspicuous, but that does not confer an invitation to use them. The connection between "visible" and "inviting" is not legally or morally valid. (I am excepting the concept of "attractive nuisance", but I don't think open routers will come under that area of liability)
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
I suppose you could also add a frame to every page and then sell advertising space. Since you probably know a bit about your neighbour it is much easier make targeted advertising. Of course you could always make the top frame read:
"This is borrowed bandwidth. Have you thought about getting your own connection."
Oh and make sure it is flashing. Actually you could make it so that the whole content flash. Now that would be annoying.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Upside down is cute, but blurry is just too fantastic.
You know they were on the horn to the vendor after punching every monitor control and several loud screaming matches and an expensive service call for a monitor that then worked just fine on the bench...
As a webmaster I can now say April 1 just got very far away...
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Even something as amorphous as bandwidth is a limited resource. To paraphrse the head of the commerce committee, an open wireless connection is not a dump truck you can just load up with as much as you like; it's a tube!
Sure, if you want to make sure nobody uses your tube, you should protect it. But just because you don't doesn't mean you're giving explicit permission. If I leave my bike on my front lawn without a lock and someone steals it--even if they give it back before I notice it was gone--it's still theft.
The CB App. What's your 20?
What you are saying is that, unles I put a tarp up around my garden, everyone has a right to use it.
No, actually we're saying that if your garden pelts us with carrots and peas as we walk past on the public street, we're at liberty to catch them and consume them. Only if you place anti-vegetable-flight netting around your garden (or stop planting vegetables that lend themselves to comparison to an unsecured WAP) does it become incumbent upon us to behave as good citizens.
Hey! Analogies are fun! Somebody compare Internet privacy law to hunting and fishing licenses!
Finally modding someone offtopic when they rant about what "Begging the Question" means: priceless.