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Australian Police Plan Wardriving Mission
bfire writes "Police officers in the Australian state of Queensland plan to conduct a 'wardriving' mission around select towns in an effort to educate citizens to secure their wireless networks. When unsecured networks are found, the Police will pay a friendly visit to the household or small business, informing them of the risks they are exposing themselves to. Officers also hope to return to surveyed areas within a month to see if users have fixed their security settings. The idea is modeled on another campaign where officers walk around railway stations checking cars have been locked, and leaving notes warning people of the dangers involved with leaving their vehicles unsecured."
"checking cars have been locked, and leaving notes warning people of the dangers involved with leaving their vehicles unsecured."
So, as a criminal, the police have saved me the trouble of having to work out which cars are unlocked by flagging them up for me?
Slightly more on topic, is there a law against leaving your network open in Australia? What if I'm just being helpful, will they continue to badger me until I lock down my access point?
It's all fun and games until a 200' robot dinosaur shows up and trashes Neo-Tokyo... Again
so what do you think they'll say when I say I do it deliberately ?
I don't mind sharing my wifi with complete strangers. I restrict it to make sure they can't cost me too much and everything I do on it is encrypted via VPN so - meh!
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
I also like the idea of police officers visiting every home and place of business, more as a social visit and to establish better ties between the police and civilians. You know, get to know 'your' local police officer and, establish a more social contact with at least one officer whom you can contact in the event of need. Also it would help to remind officers of what their role really is in assisting the public to maintain a civil and orderly society.
Of course while it might work in Australia, in the US with pepper spray and taser abuse out of control and with 'public' discussions of the effectiveness, legality and use of torture it would likely have the opposite affect and drive an even greater wedge between 'law enforcement' and the public.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Seems like some kind of pseudo threat to me. What are they implying, that if some criminal uses their open access port to post goat porn to /b/ the home owner is going to be criminally liable? What if you _like_ having an open access port, and don't mind if your elderly neighbors use it occasionally to check their email? Quite frankly it doesn't seem to be the homeowner's job to lock the world down in order to prevent crime, especially crime that can be remedied by pulling a plug, if it ever actually causes the homeowner to lose bandwidth. Come to think about it, it's not the cops job to prevent crime either.
So, who exactly is this benefiting? My guess would be whoever provides ISP service has been hitting up their political puppets... after all, your 60 year old neighbor should get with the times and start paying $100 a month for internet access like all the other good citizens.
One of my internships involved installing free and open wireless access points around my university's small town. I always wondered if another student would be taking them all down in the future. Some things are just too good to be true. Although, I hear some homeless are making use of free access points in their own cities. Why would anyone want to take that away? I'm all for free internet, and enjoyed the internship, but something tells it's just not going to last.
Health Freedom is almost as popular as Freedom itself.
...and leaving notes warning people of the dangers involved with leaving their vehicles unsecured.
What? People don't know this in Australia? I mean if it came to become a campaign the problem must have been of significant magnitude. I'm not trying to flamebait here but back to my question: people don't know this in Australia?
I am the lawn!
The police maybe able to see my wireless network as unsecured, but unless their mac address is in my router they have no chance of connecting to it.
Oh, there are a lot of strange ways this could play out:
[ knock, knock ]
-Do you have the WLAN with the SSID MonkeyTails?
-The what, Sir?
-Wireless Network?
-Oh, for the computer Internet? No, I think ours is called captaincrook.
-Okay, that one is safe.
-Safe?
-Yeah, we are driving around checking for insecure WLANs. Do you know who MonkeyTails are?
-I think it's my neighbour.
-Ok, thank you.
[ knock, knock ]
- Hello.
- Hello, are you the owner of the WLAN MonkeyTails?
- Yes?
- It's insecure.
- I know.
- Well, you should secure it.
- No, I don't want to secure it.
- You should secure it or pedophiles could use it.
- It is an old router that doesn't support encryption.
- Well, let us know if you see any pedophiles.
- Bye.
So when a kid demonstrates he can access his school's network or a customer demonstrates that he can get free calls from a phone system, they will be thrown out of school for 'hacking' or arrested for 'theft of service'. But when the police do it, it's fine?
Whats happening here?
It seems that two of the largest organisations hating the sharing of WiFi access are the police, who don't like the fact that unofficial open access points don't log and the ISPs who hate to think that they are losing a potential customer.
Some years back in London, a chain of winebars (C&B) offered free access for their customers with no fancy tumbling time code or anything (you, know where they print a code that has a limited validity on the till receipt).. A story appeared in one of the papers about how people were able to 'steal WiFi access' showing the 'security consultant' with a laptop in the city of London demonstrating that there was open WiFi. Yep, because they are standing directly outside that Winebar (out of shot). I have stood there myself, as the bar was too noisy, so I could use Skype over WiFi to contact my SO. This is fairly common practice now, but it disrupts the business models of people like Vodafone or commercial WiFi providers.
See my journal, I write things there
Seems like some kind of pseudo threat to me. What are they implying, that if some criminal uses their open access port to post goat porn to /b/ the home owner is going to be criminally liable?
It is not a threat. It is a fact. If your WLAN is left open and someone commits crimes through it, you could be really screwed. In most cases it would probably not be enough to prove that you did the crime and get you a sentence in court but it could still land you a lot of trouble. And it could be used maliciously: Let's say that a co-worker that likes neither you or your boss comes to use your WLAN to harass your boss?
There are risks in having an open WLAN. Some of them have something to do with you becoming suspected of crime, some are about how other people can commit crimes against you. It can be argued if the police is the best organization to educate about this or not but police certainly can do it and it is important thing to do.
What if you _like_ having an open access port, and don't mind if your elderly neighbors use it occasionally to check their email?
Then they say "Okay." and go to the next apartment. This isn't about them coming to force you protect your WLAN, it is about educating that "Hey, your WLAN is open. Are you aware of the risks?" Because honestly, there are a lot of WLANs that are open because their owner has forgotten to protect them, doesn't know how to do it or doesn't even know that it should be done. I would guess that these even outnumber those who leave it open intentionally.
Quite frankly it doesn't seem to be the homeowner's job to lock the world down in order to prevent crime,
Same can be said about locking your apartment's door. It isn't a homeowners job, right?
especially crime that can be remedied by pulling a plug, if it ever actually causes the homeowner to lose bandwidth.
In some cases the crime can cause a lot more. Perhaps the cops should visit you?
Come to think about it, it's not the cops job to prevent crime either.
Wait, what? Police is supposed to execute the laws which tell what people shouldn't do. It certainly isn't limited to investigating the wrongs that people have already done.
What risks are they exposing themselves to? Does Australia hold carriers responsible for content? How would a residential open WiFi differ from the free WiFi at a coffee house?
I think I would warn the cops about the "risks" of coming to my home and harassing me...
I understand why the Police are doing this, and I think it is a good move. Yes, I am an Australian, and a QLD'er.
This will let people know who truly do not, and can prevent crimes such as identity theft, downloading illegal stuff etc.
For the record, operating an insecure wifi AP is not illegal, this is just a helpful initiative.
The thing is, it is 2009. For the last 5 years at least, most AP's have security enabled by default, or at least as a mandatory step of the setup.
At the very least, there will be a warning that will be hard to miss.
For the last 5 years or so, information on this has been forthcoming to people who are not overly technical via:
* TV shows, non technical like 60 minutes or a talk show
* Magazines, including many of which are non tech magazines
* Various websites, including many non tech websites, such as MSN
* Your operating system, such as Windows, OS X or Ubuntu giving you warnings
* User guides or manuals in very, very, simple to understand language
* Warning stickers on the box or device
* Probably quite a few other avenues as well
There is very little reason to not be aware of the risks of running an insecure network. All too often it is a case of stupidity, as people do this for the sake of convenience. Nothing is going to change these peoples minds.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
Does the police specified that people should use WAP and Strong passwords, if they really wanted to protect their networks.
I've moved to a new apartment 3 months ago. My building is in a very dense populated area. Due to bureaucrat issues, I was over one month without an internet connection. Since I had over 25 available wireless networks on my house I gave the http://www.aircrack-ng.org/doku.php?id=tutorial aircrack online tutorials a shot. It was amazing how easy it is to crack a WEP connection. On average I took less than 10 minutes to crack a WEP wireless. Over 40% of people(at least around here), still use this totally insecure encryption method.
I've started to get curious about who is Using Wep. So I've made a survey with my laptop, and my phone(it has wireless), to see who is using Wep. I have a HP shop on the other side of the street, that has a big splash symbol on the window "Microsoft Certified". They have IT consultants and they are using WEP. What a joke.
My local Social Security Center is using WEP possibily exposing the entire contry database(it's just a guess. I didn't really crack it). Also WAP is not difficult to crack with weak passwords, and most of the people don't have a clue about strong passwords.
I currently have my network open, only closing when I need full bandwidth, and my SSID is something like WEP_IS_LIKE_OPEN, but in my language.
I guess worst than having an open network is to wrongly think you are secure.
People who donate money to charity will lose that money.
People who donate some of their bandwidth to passing surfers probably lose nothing.
Surely the police should be concentrating on the cases where there is a more significant danger of loss.
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I think it's a good campaign. After all, how much money and time do you think it takes to cover a neighborhood? A couple of officers could probably do this in a few days.
Nobody said it's illegal and they are not constraining anyone to "secure" their AP. It's just like a patrol passes by and they see you are in some kind of trouble. It's their job to stop and ask if you need any assistance. If somebody wants to keep their wireless open, it will probably cost them a couple of minutes to talk to the police and explain their point of view. On the other hand, if someone is unaware that their internet connection could be used by anyone, I think it's pretty much worth it.
And, if anything, it's just a visit from your friendly police officer. They should do it more often.
In the first Mad Max movie, Max was a cop.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Thank you, Judge. I'm so happy you're here to tell us we can't be impressed by someone's paint job or check out their bobblehead.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
Fuck off.
I've never stolen a car or broken into one but I have every fucking right to walk through a car park.
You don't like it?
Piss off and keep your precious penis substitute locked in your garage.
So now looking at things is preparation to steal them? Is looking a woman preparation to rape her? What about slowing down and looking twice? Perhaps you need a burka for your car.
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