Hacking Neighbor Pleads Guilty On Death Threats and Porn

wiredmikey writes "Another good reason to make sure your wireless is secured! 'Barry Vincent Ardolf of Blaine, Minnesota pleaded guilty to hacking into his neighbor's wireless Internet system and posing as the neighbor to make threats to kill the Vice President of the United States. Just two days into his federal trial in St. Paul, Ardolf stopped the trial to plead guilty. According to the US Department of Justice, in his plea agreement, Ardolf, 45 years-old, was indicted on June 23, 2010, admitted that in February of 2009, he hacked into his neighbor's wireless Internet connection and created multiple Yahoo.com email accounts in his neighbor's name." Ardolf's guilty plea included child porn possession, as well as the death threats.

Comments

My neighbor's IP

[asher09]

First post! ...(from my neighbor's IP address; so mod him down, not me)

Re:My neighbor's IP

[Eudial]

Stupid Flanders!

Re:My neighbor's IP

[timlyg]

What I don't understand is how did adolf get caught in the first place?

Re:My neighbor's IP

[Co0Ps]

Diddly-doodily-death threats!

Re:My neighbor's IP

[MachDelta]

He sent threats and child porn (etc) to his neighbours co-workers. His neighbours hired an "investigator" who then discovered buddy was jacking their wireless.

Basically someone looked at their router logs.

Re:My neighbor's IP

[deek]

He might have gotten away with it too, if instead he used the connection to download and share heaps of music, and then sent an anonymous tip to the RIAA. That would have put his neighbour in court quick smart. From what I've heard, lack of evidence means little to the RIAA.

Re:My neighbor's IP

[Migity]

He probably logged into his newly created Yahoo accounts from somewhere else besides through his neighbor's WAP. At that point it's easy to track.

Re:My neighbor's IP

[paedobear]

He tried to start a war on two fronts

Re:My neighbor's IP

[Anonymous Coward]

Not even that. Just figure out when the problems occurred or are occurring and find out who is home nearby those days. Try to correlate it first. Then test the correlation by inserting a variable. If there was a "PI" then they would have probably staked out anyone driving by or sitting in a car nearby. If no one ever showed up in a car it would be obvious that it would be local due to the distance consumer wifi reaches.

The only time the logs would be needed is to find out if the attacks happened via wireless or a wired connection; different IP ranges are usually used for wireless. ie: 1-10 would be wired and 20-30 would be wireless or something to that extent

Re:My neighbor's IP

[Anonymous Coward]

he might've gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for those meddling kids

Re:My neighbor's IP

[timlyg]

I know the possibilities of how he could be caught, but why isn't it being reported? Did I miss something?

Re:My neighbor's IP

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Fuck you're a moron. Even a $20 router has options to see what MAC address is connected to your router. One subpoena and you're done.

Re:My neighbor's IP

[mark72005]

"He might have gotten away with it too, if "

If it weren't for you meddling kids?

Re:My neighbor's IP

[mcgrew]

TFS says "Another good reason to make sure your wireless is secured! 'Barry Vincent Ardolf of Blaine, Minnesota pleaded guilty to hacking into his neighbor's wireless Internet system"

Um, you don't have to "hack"* into an unsecured system. If your system is unsecured, you're in the clear, as if someone goes in through your unsecured wireless they're going to have to have evidence on your PC, not just an IP address.

Secure your computer, firewall your wired network off from the wireless router, and leave the wifi unsecured. Otherwise you're a selfish, stingy son of a bitch.

* Come on, guys, this is slashdot, news for NERDS. Turning a transistor radio into a guitar fuzzbox is hacking; putting a real keyboard on an iPhone is hacking; breaking into computers is CRACKING.

Fucking wannabes...

Re:My neighbor's IP

[clone52431]

You wouldn’t even need a subpoena, if you have his MAC address all you’d need to do is wait for him to connect and triangulate on his signal.

Re:My neighbor's IP

[amicusNYCL]

Not only that. It WAS secured.

He created e-mail accounts in Matt Kostolnik's name and used a password-cracking program to hack into the Kostolniks' wireless router.

That being the extent of the technical details, it sounds like he may have used a WEP-cracking utility.

Re:My neighbor's IP

[AntariMysteec]

Basically inaccurate...

Re:My neighbor's IP

[fxcbs]

The Motorola Defy is virtually unique http://onlinemobiles.blogspot.com/2010/12/motorola-defy.html

What's not to like?

[seebs]

Death threats against the vice president, breaking into his neighbor's wireless... But no, he didn't stop there. Child porn.

I wonder if some company that has a wireless security technology hired this guy to make their product look necessary.

Re:What's not to like?

[gnarfel]

+1 Ethically Questionable Business Tactic

Re:What's not to like?

[andolyne]

when you read TFA, it actually just sounds like he was screwing around and the child porn was more like "this'll get the dude in trouble" rather than "I have a private collection because i'm a pedo".

Either way, the dude was really stupid and deserves to get jail time for it.

edit: changed the word "article" to TFA cause that's the way it's done here ;)

Re:What's not to like?

[Stregano]

You think that the dude hit Google to find what he considerred good child porn. I have no clue what that would be since I consider it all to be bad. Also, CP is such a common thing to plant these days. He needs to step up his game.

Also, did the guy hack it, or just get access to it since it was left without proper security, as I would not consider it "hacking" to access the neighbor's wireless.

Furthermore, I am one of the people that believe that people should understand the technology they use, or else not use it at all (you know, learn to drive before you try to operate a motor vehicle). There are way too many people who buy wireless routers, hook them up, and never touch the security because they know nothing about it. At that point kid, stick to wired, as it is simpler. No, I am not saying learn how TCP and UDP tramsfer packets, but I also did not say you need to become an auto mechanic to drive a car. Just a good, general understanding.

Maybe next time home skillet will put some better security on his router or else go to using wired

Re:What's not to like?

[MoonBuggy]

The article is rather sparse on details, but what interests me is that Ardolf didn't succeed in his "this'll get the dude in trouble" plan; what led the police to believe that the access point had been 'hacked'? What security was used, for that matter? Were there logs?

The guilty plea certainly makes it seem like this is a case where computer fraud was handled correctly by the system, and since the courts often seem to make the mistake that 'IP address == person' it'd be good to see how they went about distinguishing the actual criminal from the victim here.

Re:What's not to like?

[RsG]

I wonder if some company that has a wireless security technology hired this guy to make their product look necessary.

I haven't seen a home wireless router that didn't include WPA in ages. I'm pretty sure there aren't separate "wireless security companies" with nefarious agendas, so much as there are network security specialists working at every major wireless router manufacturer.

The problem isn't the hardware, the problem exists between the chair and the keyboard. Any security system requires the cooperation of the end user to do its job; if they switch security off, or never switch it on in the first place, all the clever engineering in the world won't protect them. Of course, usually what they're being protected from is leeches, instead of asshole neighbours intent on ruining their lives.

Re:What's not to like?

[MoonBuggy]

Unsecured doesn't imply incompetent - there are people who happily leave a public WiFi connection to the net which is securely isolated from their internal network. Hell, there are businesses built on exactly that premise.

Re:What's not to like?

[benjamindees]

He worked for Medtronic, which is a huge recipient of healthcare funding for unnecessary surgeries for old people. So, in a sense, yes, he was being indirectly paid by the US government as he tried to frame his neighbor as being anti-government-spending. I'd say that qualifies as promoting a product.

Re:What's not to like?

[Anonymous Coward]

Any security system requires the cooperation of the end user to do its job

Any good security system should do its job despite the actions of the end user.

Re:What's not to like?

[Stregano]

I actually stopped and read TFA for once. You are correct and I will retract what I said about wireless. My fault on that kid

It is possible he connected to the wifi, and never touched the dude's pc, which it sounds like the case is.

Now is where it gets gross: the CP was e-mailed out to the neighbor's co-workers as an attachment. That means home slice was downloading CP to use an an attachment.

Also, the MySpace page the guy made with the same image should have sent red flags that it is not him and somebody harrassing him. How often do you hear of some dude doing that?

Also, how did this guy get his neighbor's coworkers e-mail addresses? He must have either: hacked into the dude's pc or hacked into something and did real hacking, or worked with the person and hence knew the e-mail addresses already, or knew the dude good enough to get the e-mail addresses.

Also, nobody, unless you have no remorse and are totally cold hearted, would up and try to do that to their neighbor. This article does not state what the neighbor did. Maybe the neighbor f*@ked his wife and slapped all 4 of his kids in the face and is a super massive dude that works out and is too big to go beat up. We don't know.

The CP part is pretty gross since the dude did not just go visit sites or something, he downloaded the stuff and sent it off (makes you wonder how much the dude downloaded).

I do think that we should not just assume this guy is a nutjob (the CP leads us into it, but even still) we do not know if this was justified or not. If my neighbor f*@ked my wife and slapped all 4 of my kids in the face I would do something back to him for sure. I would not download CP to get him back, but I would get him back (CL Personal ads anybody?)

Re:What's not to like?

[Capsaicin]

Unsecured doesn't imply incompetent - there are people who happily leave a public WiFi connection to the net which is securely isolated from their internal network.

In fact, if you intend doing anything online which might raise the ire of authorities, "securing" your WiFi is actually quite foolish. What you are effectively doing is removing a reasonable doubt that activity over the connection is your activity.

Re:What's not to like?

[Idbar]

I recently moved to a new apartment, my connection wasn't that great and I was having problems with my router. I used WEP to make it "light" to the router to deal with security and due to some backward compatibility I needed for some devices at home.

When I thought my router was having problems, I bought a new one, only to realize through logs that my lovely neighbor broke into my network and was torrenting and stressing my router, my connection and most likely downloading illegal stuff.

Now, my router is secure, yet there's an asshat hacking my network and making me look bad (in the case that I was detected to be downloading by **IA and friends).

Luckily, I tracked this down and secure further the network, but without proper tools, what can a normal user do against these smart asses?

Re:What's not to like?

[Barny]

Browser history, cache, etc.

They would have gotten the guy who owns the net connections PC and gone to town, found it clean of any corroborating evidence and then gone looking for neighbours who might have been using it (since it would have been a regular thing over time). Cross reference which neighbours don't have their own net connections with a motive (who had a grudge against him).

Easier to narrow down the field of who would do it by motive, of course once it was established it was a frame up.

Re:What's not to like?

[camperdave]

Manually assigned IP addresses and manual routing would put a big dent in this sort of thing.

Re:What's not to like?

[icebike]

The article is rather sparse on details, but what interests me is that Ardolf didn't succeed in his "this'll get the dude in trouble" plan; what led the police to believe that the access point had been 'hacked'? What security was used, for that matter? Were there logs?

Chances are it was wide open, no security. The guy does not sound bright enough to have even hacked WEP, let alone anything stronger.

With that fact in hand, and finding no evidence that the neighbor had any knowledge or ill intent, your circle of suspects is limited to what you can measure with a standard hard ware store carpenters tape measure.

Re:What's not to like?

[icebike]

Oh, come on. The fool sent threats via email.

Monitoring?

Next you are going to blame google for turning him in.

Re:What's not to like?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that simple.. hopefully. At least a physical search would require a warrant... maybe?

Re:What's not to like?

[FutureDomain]

what can a normal user do against these smart asses?

Here's an idea. Get a Linux based router (I have a Linksys with DD-WRT) and use it to muck with any connections coming from his MAC address. You could block all his Bittorrent connections and redirect his HTTP connections somewhere else (such as a rickroll or goatse). Do this long enough to annoy the heck out of him and then block him completely using a higher grade encryption (such as WPA2) and/or MAC filtering.

Re:What's not to like?

[Anonymous Coward]

The guilty plea certainly makes it seem like this is a case where computer fraud was handled correctly by the system

Unfortunately in the US's legal system many innocent people are forced to plead guilty by threats of excess punishment. When you don't have evidence to prove your innocence pleading guilty is sometimes the wise choice.

Re:What's not to like?

[RsG]

I'm not convinced of that. You're correct if the end user is semi-competent, but incorrect if the end user is an idiot. After all, the security system likely has an "off" switch somewhere (physical or otherwise). A security system cannot "do its job despite the actions of the end user" if the action of the end user is to turn them damn thing off, because they can't figure out how to make it work.

Re:What's not to like?

[ifiwereasculptor]

Editing? On my ./?

Re:What's not to like?

[Barny]

It would have.

Police still don't think technically, they stick to police work and leave the dissecting of evidence to professionals. They would have thought, "The crime was done via computer, so lets get a warrant to search for and seize his computer stuff" then they get someone else to go through that, to find the evidence that ties the person to the crime. Finding none they would have gone searching for a motive.

The problems arise when technology forms the core of the case, rather than just being evidence for an crime that is at its core, revenge (whether justified or not).

Either way, this guy (the perp) is likely going to spend a fair while reflecting on why its a bad idea to try and have the police do your dirty work for you.

Note: IANAC (I am not a cop), I just know a few pretty well, the funny thing is some of them are very switched on about technology, its just they are not encouraged to use that knowledge when on cases.

Re:What's not to like?

[ProfanityHead]

what can a normal user do against these smart asses?

Here's an idea. Get a Linux based router (I have a Linksys with DD-WRT) and use it to muck with any connections coming from his MAC address. You could block all his Bittorrent connections and redirect his HTTP connections somewhere else (such as a rickroll or goatse). Do this long enough to annoy the heck out of him and then block him completely using a higher grade encryption (such as WPA2) and/or MAC filtering.

MAC filtering? SERIOUSLY?

That is just so wrong.

Re:What's not to like?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not entirely sure, but I think that has already been tried and failed.

Re:What's not to like?

[icebike]

Luckily, I tracked this down and secure further the network, but without proper tools, what can a normal user do against these smart asses?

Read Slash Dot occasionally and notice that WEP is insecure.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=WEP+insecure+site%3Aslashdot.org

Move away from WEP (its been known for 5 years to be easily hacked).

WPA2 is where you want to be.
I had a laptop with a mini-pci network adapter built in that was old enough that it didn't support anything but WEP. 8 bucks got me a replacement card from Amazon, which did WPA2.

Computers are easy to upgrade. Some stuff is harder.

Re:What's not to like?

[Hatta]

The guilty plea certainly makes it seem like this is a case where computer fraud was handled correctly by the system

Don't be so quick. Many innocent people plead guilty because they've been poorly advised by a public defender. A plea of guilty doesn't mean the person was guilty. It means that a deal was offered and the suspect had no faith in his defense at trial.

Re:What's not to like?

[Idbar]

That's exactly my point. You think you're the smartest guy because you're stealing your neighbor's BW? You can be as smart as you want, but if you pick my lock, and try to get into my place when I'm in, in my defense I can shoot your head with my gun.

Then again, I check my network and see something abusive. I don't care if a person uses my network (I used to leave it open - as a grad student you realize that some people just don't have the money to pay for a freaking network connection). What I don't like is abusive people that get into my network even though I'm using security. Let's face it, your regular lock on an average US neighborhood can be open even with a credit card, no reason to break into the houses. You expect that little security will keep your neighbors informed that you DON'T want them to use it.

Then again, if I manage to break my neighbor's WPA then I'm good and I can start downloading whatever it pleases me on his behalf?

Re:What's not to like?

[Pseudonym Authority]

He was originally pissed at his neighbors for calling the cops on him when he got caught kissing their son. I wouldn't be so sure of his motives.
Also, you should have wrote RTFA rather than just TFA.

Re:What's not to like?

[cob666]

The could have just checked the DHCP log in the wireless router.

Re:What's not to like?

[cob666]

Or you could only allow certain MAC addresses to connect.

Re:What's not to like?

[igreaterthanu]

If BitTorrent never works then it is obvious that it is blocked. If you slow it down to something ridiculously measly, such as a few kb/s, and eventually disconnect at random intervals, it is much more annoying for the neighbor and hence funnier that way.

Same goes for HTTP redirects. Make them only happen every 50 pages or something. If you have a fair bit of time on your hands then injecting fake news articles onto their favorite news site could be interesting.

Re:What's not to like?

[Cwix]

If he doesnt have a large number of devices, AND he doesnt add new devices with any frequency, then adding a few address to a MAC list isnt a bad idea. Unless the neighbor knows what mac to spoof, he wont get on.

It by no means is a great or even good security practice, but in certain situations, it isnt that horrible.

Re:What's not to like?

[Anonymous Coward]

This guy has a history of problems with neighbors. This isnt his first run in with the law
See: http://www.startribune.com/local/99435264.html
and
http://www.startribune.com/local/north/96012389.html

Re:What's not to like?

[Myopic]

I'm revoking your nerd merit badge for explaining all of that instead of linking to the obligatory XKCD.

Re:What's not to like?

[westlake]

Death threats against the vice president, breaking into his neighbor's wireless... But no, he didn't stop there. Child porn.

Read deeper.

Think before another knee-jerk mod-up:

It began in August 2008, when Ardolf's new neighbors called Blaine police to report a creepy encounter. Ardolf, they told police, had picked up their 4-year-old son and kissed him. After that, Matt and Bethany Kostolnik said, they intended to just keep their distance from him.

Unknown to them, he began moving to exact revenge.

He created e-mail accounts in Matt Kostolnik's name and used a password-cracking program to hack into the Kostolniks' wireless router. He then sent e-mails -- one containing sexually suggestive language, others containing images of child pornography -- to Matt Kostolnik's co-workers and boss. It was all meant to appear that the e-mails came from Kostolnik. Ardolf also used the bogus e-mail accounts to create a fake MySpace page, which contained a child porn image.

Later, he sent another fake e-mail to Kostolnik's law firm, purporting to be from a woman who claimed Kostolnik sexually assaulted her. The woman was real, the incident was not.

Vengeful neighbor in Blaine pleads to Biden threat, hacking [Dec 17]

Re:What's not to like?

[MillionthMonkey]

"Good child porn", if not oxymoronic, is probably not hard to find. Once I saw a Wikileaks story on the "secret" blacklist of websites that Norway was firewalling. Somehow the list got out to Wikileaks, and all the URLs were published there as links. I clicked on a random one from the list, thinking "he he he, this wouldn't work if I were in Norway." Except the site was kind of gross so I clicked Back and tried another one. That was gross too... I started to think, hmmm, I can see why these sites pissed off the Norwegians! Then I suddenly had an epiphany: don't load websites that have been banned in Norway.

Re:What's not to like?

[Jardine]

If BitTorrent never works then it is obvious that it is blocked. If you slow it down to something ridiculously measly, such as a few kb/s, and eventually disconnect at random intervals, it is much more annoying for the neighbor and hence funnier that way.

My ISP provides that service already. Thanks Bell Canada!

Re:What's not to like?

[Anonymous Coward]

But if they are smart enough they could "clone" your MAC address onto their card if it supports it, and then the MAC filtering wouldn't work

Re:What's not to like?

[igreaterthanu]

Yeah well I'm going to revoke your nerd merit badge revoking privileges and replace you with a very simple shell script.

On second thoughts, someone could just write a browser add-on to prevent people such as me making such terrible mistakes in future.

Re:What's not to like?

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 Ethically Questionable Business Tactic

So when is the IPO?

Re:What's not to like?

[Architect_sasyr]

Since when has MAC filtering been more than a minute annoyance to an attacker. Or lack of DHCP/ Routing.

Strong passwords, WPA2-CCMP and a good watch on your logs is the only thing that's going to keep you safe (at this point in time) if you are home user.

Re:What's not to like?

[nbauman]

Minneapolis Star Tribune http://www.startribune.com/ had several stories, which you can find by searching for "Ardolf". Good stories, although not too technical.

The victim, Matt Kostolnik, worked in a law firm, and Ardolf sent messages to the firm. The law firm hired an investigator to figure out what was going on. The investigator tracked Kostolnik's wireless traffic, and fingered Ardolf. Then they sent the cops with a search warrant to Ardolf's house, which produced even more incriminating evidence.

Ardolf turned down a plea bargain on the identity theft charges alone, so they added the child porn charges and went to trial. When he saw the evidence against him, he gave up and pled guilty.

I can remember a handful of cases like this where the victim got out of it because they managed to catch the real criminal. (Wasn't there one recently in England?) I wonder how many cases there were where the innocent victim got convicted.

Re:What's not to like?

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh, ROFL no. I wrote the above bit (the I-am-your-wireless-leeching-neighbor bit was tongue-in-cheek; the monitor-your-bloody-net and wep-sucks-donkey-balls bits were serious), and I don't think script kiddies running wesside-ng are that smart -- maybe a step above clueless WEPusers. And saying you "my router is secure" with WEP had me going -- to me, that's justnot what that word means, savvy? Anyway, been chilling and vaping a bit since, and will now try to discuss this without the half-trolling.

So you said you used WEP, found your network was compromised, and locked the bastard out. (Huzzah!)

But then you ask "without proper tools, what can a normal user do against these smart asses?" Well, pardon me if I don't know what the fuck to make of that -- if you by "proper tools" mean what you (eventually) used (i.e. a brain, a locally connected PC, and a browser), then without them you can't do much at all (fortunately, without them you probably won't care about leechy bastards, either). Otherwise, a normal user can do exactly what you did, but hopefully monitoring more often, and applying non-broken encryption pre-emptively.

As to if you break WPA: I blame the leecher either way. If the network was WEP, I ALSO blame the ''victim''. But if you break WPA net with a strong passphrase, I will be forced to respect either your crypto skillz or your hardware budget. ;)

Re:What's not to like?

[blueg3]

In criminal matters, law enforcement knows full well that an IP address is not a unique identifier. There are countless cases where a computer is shared among multiple people or an access point is "borrowed" to obtain illicit material. You can't really get a conviction with just evidence that illicit material was sent to a particular IP address; the defendant's lawyers will have a field day with that. You need real corroborating evidence, like files on the guy's computer.

Re:What's not to like?

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Also, did the guy hack it, or just get access to it since it was left without proper security, as I would not consider it "hacking" to access the neighbor's wireless.

I wouldn't consider taking a car with the keys left in it "theft", but go figure - the law disagrees ;) Just because it's easy to attach to someone's unsecured network doesn't mean doing so is acceptable -- the wrongdoer is the one making the connection, not the one who fails to make such activity challenging enough to deter the would-be perpetrator.

Re:What's not to like?

[Anonymous Coward]

the courts often seem to make the mistake that 'IP address == person'

Recently? And where? I'm asking because around here wifi routers are bog standard now. It's what the cops and judges use at home, like everyone else.

Re:What's not to like?

[apparently]

If he doesnt have a large number of devices, AND he doesnt add new devices with any frequency, then adding a few address to a MAC list isnt a bad idea.

The problem is that the scenario involves a neighbor who has gone through the effort of breaking WEP; anyone using the tools to break WEP already has the tools available to see the MAC addresses of whitelisted clients, and thus can just spoof a valid MAC address.

Re:What's not to like?

[fl_litig8r]

The could have just checked the DHCP log in the wireless router.

So what would this have shown? I'm no pro, but wouldn't the only personally identifiable info you'd get be a MAC address? If this ass clown wasn't using MAC spoofing, then he was just begging to get caught.

Re:What's not to like?

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

MAC filtering will stop a kiddie for all of 3 seconds. WEP for 45 seconds. WPA (with a PSK) with a short password ( 8 characters) for a few minutes or hours based on complexity and/or computing power. The best thing you can do is to use WPA2 with a long random password full of special characters. Even then you're open to a bruteforce attack. When I'm on wifi, I just assume everything I do is being monitored (lemme adjust my tinfoil hat), if there's anything critical that I need to do, I do it plugged directly into the router running a clean virtualized workstation.

Re:What's not to like?

[Stargoat]

Bull. Law enforcement doesn't know dick if they don't have to. Cops are concerned with getting raises, promotions, names in the papers. They are typically not concerned with justice. If its an open and shut case, they will happily send innocent men to jail. Unless they are forced to acknowledge it, an IP address is good enough to hang a man.

Re:What's not to like?

[Capsaicin]

I'm not entirely sure, but I think that has already been tried and failed.

As a matter of law (judge) or as a matter of fact (jury)? In the case you are not entirely sure exists was the doubt negated by the contents on the drive?

Re:What's not to like?

[Anonymous Coward]

hello, macchanger anyone? encrypt your hard drive anyone? what an idiot.

Re:What's not to like?

[DigiShaman]

Well, the parent did say he needed backwards compatibility. Most, if not all, routers purchased these days will walk a user through securing a WiFi router. Generally, it's WPA2 TKIP or AES. What usually ends up happening is when one of the devices won't connect at which point they will contact tech support and informed to step-down the security. If the user is really clueless, they would have talked to both the device and router vendor for further guidance on how to do all that.

As far as I'm concerned, WPA2 should be the only option available as a standard. If the device doesn't support it because it's either EOL of support, or the hardware can't handle it, toss it. Sucks, I know. But having your home security compromised isn't worth it IMHO.

Re:What's not to like?

[Anonymous Coward]

Airmon will monitor wireless network traffic on any channel you specify, one of the first things it shows you is what computers are connected to that network, sorted by: MAC address. It is then a very simple matter of spoofing your MAC to any of the ones listed to gain full access.
I used to think limiting connections with mac only was secure until I started playing around with the backtrack live cd.

Re:What's not to like?

[Anonymous Coward]

Either this guy has some shitty luck, or he's doing something wrong... lol

Re:What's not to like?

[Belial6]

If leaving keys in your car was the local custom for implicitly letting people know that it was ok to use the car, then it would not be stealing. While some people don't expect someone else to connect to their router, leaving a router without a password IS the stand practice for telling people it is ok to use the router. Every router comes with a way to indicate that you don't want someone use it without permission.

If you want a car theft analogy, you would need to have a society where lots of people, and even more businesses let people use their cars without explicit permission, every car comes standard with a sign bolted on and unremovable that says "Do Not Use Without Permission", and you decided to have the sign folded down so that a stranger looking to use your car cannot see it.

Re:What's not to like?

[WidgetGuy]

If your router supports it, use MAC address filtering. Basically, you need to obtain the MAC addresses of all of your home equipment and those of the eqipment to be used by anyone you've agreed to let use your WiFi. Then enter them via your router's admin interface. If someone with an unknown MAC address attempts to even find your WiFi, they won't. It doesn't exist to any machines except those in the MAC address whitelist.

Also, if your router supports both aministrative and "guest" passwords, only supply the guest password to those outside your LAN. But, MAC address filtering gives you the finest grain of control over your system.

Re:What's not to like?

[Anonymous Coward]

AirDrop, you can drop or herd wifi connections, you can make him connect to your AP and just keep sending him garbage. That way no matter where he connects he's stuck. I heard that some where on the Internet, really.

Re:What's not to like?

[Barny]

Fact is they wouldn't bother, they are supporting evidence at best.

What they wanted was the logs and files (deleted or not) from the bad guys computer, that is hard evidence that he did it and would take a lot of work from a defence lawyer to avoid.

Re:What's not to like?

[innocent_white_lamb]

I had a laptop with a mini-pci network adapter built in that was old enough that it didn't support anything but WEP.
 
This is something that I've never quite understood. Why doesn't WPA2 (or any other security protocol) work with any network adapter? I don't need any particular network card to use ssh and friends, so what's different about WPA2?

Re:What's not to like?

[innocent_white_lamb]

Also, how did this guy get his neighbor's coworkers e-mail addresses? He must have either: hacked into the dude's pc or hacked into something and did real hacking, or worked with the person and hence knew the e-mail addresses already, or knew the dude good enough to get the e-mail addresses.
 
Or maybe just checked the law firm's website?

Re:What's not to like?

[westlake]

In fact, if you intend doing anything online which might raise the ire of authorities, "securing" your WiFi is actually quite foolish. What you are effectively doing is removing a reasonable doubt that activity over the connection is your activity.

The geek's notions of "reasonable doubt" will most likely land him in the slammer.

Re:What's not to like?

[icebike]

WPA2 with AES usually has an AES encryption engine built into hardware. Its so much faster that way.

I'm not absolutely positive that there are no software drivers to do the encrypting, but every reference I've seen says its done in hardware.

Nobody writes drivers for those older cards.

  For 8-15 bucks you can swap those wifi cards out of most lap tops. They are simple drop in replacements in most cases. Drivers freely found on the web.

Even 802.11N cards can be had for about $25.

Re:What's not to like?

[Capsaicin]

The geek's notions of "reasonable doubt" will most likely land him in the slammer.

IAAL.

But do note, I'm not saying that simply leaving your connection unsecured will keep you out of the slammer. I'm saying that securing your connection will give us (lawyers) one less handle to work with.

Re:What's not to like?

[Idbar]

I certainly read quite often about that. I had an old windows smartphone with no WPA support (I recently changed my phone so I was able to upgrade my security).

My point is, does that mean that if I get to crack the WPA security of my neighbors, I should just do whatever I want on their network, including illegal attacks and downloading illegal content, and well "Bad luck I manage to crack your security and screwup your life"?

Re:What's not to like?

[Cwix]

While you are correct that it isn't failsafe, doesn't negate the fact that good security is layered. Any roadblock you can put up, that doesn't cause you too many problems, is a good roadblock.

Will it stop the attacker? Maybe, Maybe not. It really depends how much the attacker actually knows, and how much hes relying on uB3r l33T WEP crack scripts.

Re:What's not to like?

[Anonymous Coward]

MAC filtering is a waste of time. MAC addresses can easily be changed to match one of your exciting addresses. And you're already broadcasting your existing devices. Guess what one of the first things attack tools do when they're having trouble getting a response from the AP?

Re:What's not to like?

[witherstaff]

With that fact in hand

This last week stealing wifi was front page news.

This past week Officer Keith Kirk, during the middle of the day caught and arrested a subject standing in an alley behind a local business, with residential housing on the other side of the alley, holding his laptop in one hand and self-gratifying himself in public. The person had connected his computer to the internet through the connection that the local business he was standing next to offers to their customers. This subject has been charged with multiple felony charges and his computer has been seized

Re:What's not to like?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it wouldn't.

Re:What's not to like?

[Lanteran]

edit: changed the word "article" to TFA cause that's the way it's done here ;)

conformist....

Re:What's not to like?

[Kilrah_il]

So you admit it was Google? I knew it! They probably also killed Kennedy.

Re:What's not to like?

[Kilrah_il]

He is, it's called Crime. Contrary to popular belief, most criminals do get caught.

Re:What's not to like?

[Kilrah_il]

Unfortunately in the US's legal system many innocent people are forced to plead guilty by threats of excess punishment.

Citation please?

Re:What's not to like?

[rtb61]

If you look at this story in depth there is a real warning of how badly it might have gone, a more in depth article http://www.startribune.com/local/north/112080854.html?elr=KArks:DCiUHc3E7_V_nDaycUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUoD3aPc:_2yc:a_ncyD_MDCiU really indicates it was only a matter of timing.

If the actual perpetrator of the crime had stopped a little sooner, after his neighbours had been accused and prior to their lawyers assisting them with a private investigator (note the police had already defined their guilt they now had to prove their innocence) who tracked down the actual guilty party and provided substantive evidence sufficient that the police would further investigate the matter, the perpetrator would have gotten away with it.

A warning all round about IP addresses being insufficient for prosecution of any crime, about reasonable doubt being a rule for investigation as well as the court (they should not have had to pay for and use a private investigator, the police failed in their due care to properly investigate the matter) and of course the real risks you face when using a computer and the internet. First lesson, where possible use wired over wireless, when using wireless infra-red is better than radio signals sometimes convenience can come with too high a price.

Re:What's not to like?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think it is that easy to obtain child porn just to screw somebody over. Admittedly, some of the sites on the various blacklists (Sweden, Australia, The Netherlands, AFAIK all still not implemented due to many false positive) provide good leads, but when researching this I've never been able to just download nasty stuff. You always need to pay or worse (provide your own before being allowed 'in'). As soon as you're there, you have access to a 'semi-public' collection, which is just as bad as having a private one.

Re:What's not to like?

[Opportunist]

What I wonder: How does someone who is not actively looking for it get CP? It's not like you could "stumble upon" it while browsing...

Re:What's not to like?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.google.com/search?q=sexting+pressure+%22plead+guilty%22&hl=en&num=10&lr=&ft=i&cr=&safe=images&tbs=#q=%22pressured+to%22+%22plead+guilty%22&hl=en&lr=&prmd=ivns&ei=hb0RTbaKBYe38gOGhIWEBw&start=10&sa=N&fp=83f87efc6f926f13

Re:What's not to like?

[Hognoxious]

Cops are concerned with getting raises, promotions, names in the papers. They are typically not concerned with justice. If its an open and shut case, they will happily send innocent men to jail.

Mmmm, the cops don't make that decision. It's done by juries - usually composed of twelve people who are not cops.

Re:What's not to like?

[nogginthenog]

Unless the neighbor knows what mac to spoof, he wont get on.
You know that your wireless devices are broadcasting their MAC addresses right?

Re:What's not to like?

[Anonymous Coward]

The article is rather sparse on details, but what interests me is that Ardolf didn't succeed in his "this'll get the dude in trouble" plan; what led the police to believe that the access point had been 'hacked'? What security was used, for that matter? Were there logs?

Yeah - it's a god damned mystery....

how you can write but not read and follow links, but then, I'm new here.

Re:What's not to like?

[Kilrah_il]

You are correct. If someone during a police investigation pleaded guilty and then later retracted the plea, what do you think he would say? I'm sure it wouldn't be "Well, the police were very nice and all, and I did plea, but now that I think of it, I'll change my mind".
Of course he will say he was pressured. And in a way he is correct: Part of the job of a police investigator is to pressure the suspect into pleading guilty. They usually do it to people who they think actually did do the crime.
Now, I am not saying there aren't cases of innocent people forced into admitting something they didn't do, either due to hones mistakes or overzealous/bad cops, but I do honestly believe it doesn't happen as often as you imply. At least, I'll believe that way until you'll show me a better citation than a Google search (with all due respect to you and Google).

Re:What's not to like?

[Anonymous Coward]

Browser history, cache, etc.

They would have gotten the guy who owns the net connections PC and gone to town, found it clean of any corroborating evidence and then gone looking for neighbours who might have been using it (since it would have been a regular thing over time). Cross reference which neighbours don't have their own net connections with a motive (who had a grudge against him).

Easier to narrow down the field of who would do it by motive, of course once it was established it was a frame up.

Yup Barny you got it right, they used your method - guesses plucked out of their arse.

Duh - or maybe the guy who was being framed worked for a law firm who believed he hadn't sent the emails - and who sent in an investigator who *busted* the neighbour hijacking their wireless connection.

And maybe the FBI did some "research" (like, why would someone who can spell and pass a Bar exam sign his name to death threats?). Research like the kind of stuff that leads to this:- story

I'm just guessing though.....

Re:What's not to like?

[Chapter80]

From the Summary:

Another good reason to make sure your wireless is secured!

Seems like just the opposite to me - a good reason to leave your wireless open. Plausible deniability.

"Would use of those Yahoo accounts be traceable through forensic analysis of the computer that accessed it?"
"yes"
"And was any found on my computer?"
"no"
"And were all computers that had access to this wireless router analyzed?"
"no"

Re:What's not to like?

[Anonymous Coward]

This guy has a history of problems with neighbors. This isnt his first run in with the law

This guy had a history of problems with those neighbors. This is his first run in with the law

There, fixed that for you.

Nice linkies, pity you didn't read them.

Re:What's not to like?

[hiro45]

Read Slash Dot occasionally and notice that WEP is insecure. http://lmgtfy.com/?q=WEP+insecure+site%3Aslashdot.org

Move away from WEP (its been known for 5 years to be easily hacked).

WPA2 is where you want to be. I had a laptop with a mini-pci network adapter built in that was old enough that it didn't support anything but WEP. 8 bucks got me a replacement card from Amazon, which did WPA2.

Computers are easy to upgrade. Some stuff is harder.

Some stuff is a lot harder. There are many legacy network devices that only support WEP (Wii, DS, Roku, not sure about XBOX, many wireless printers etc). Most do not offer firmware upgrades, so what is the average end user supposed to do? Stop using the stuff or go out and spend thousands on replacement gear. The worst part is much of this was released well after it was known that WEP was broken but they kept releasing products that just use WEP.

Re:What's not to like?

[Anonymous Coward]

but without proper tools, what can a normal user do against these smart asses?

Gain the knowledge, acquire the tools?

Seriously, *gain the knowledge*. That'll prevent you from choosing WEP in the first place.

"smart asses"..... the opposite of a smart ass is? hint: the guy's about to serve a long sentence.

The "normal user" bit makes you sound like a user with a silent L. I could blame the industry that tries to tell you all you need to do is plug the thing in, but the world *is* full of bullshit artists - so the only real solution is the get smarter and question what we are told/sold

Re:What's not to like?

[gnasher719]

MAC filtering is a waste of time. MAC addresses can easily be changed to match one of your exciting addresses. And you're already broadcasting your existing devices. Guess what one of the first things attack tools do when they're having trouble getting a response from the AP?

Changing the MAC address of a device means you give up any excuse that you got onto someone's WiFi connection by accident. So when I call the cops, you are in serious trouble. The good thing about WiFi hacking is that you have to be nearby. Which means I'll find you. And I'm not mad enough to knock on your door myself.

Re:What's not to like?

[Anonymous Coward]

You think that the dude hit Google to find what he considerred good child porn.

Stop blaming Google for everything!

Sure Google indexes CP, but so does Bing - it just takes a lot longer. Hell, even Yahoo'll index CP - as long as your let them know you've put the site up, and you're prepared to wait

Now, where was I going with this?....

Re:What's not to like?

[SuricouRaven]

Not quite a waste of time. It'll slow attackers down by perhaps five minutes.

Re:What's not to like?

[tehcyder]

And maybe the FBI did some "research" (like, why would someone who can spell and pass a Bar exam sign his name to death threats?).

Passing a Bar exam shows you're good at studying law, not that you're a well-adjusted human being.

Re:What's not to like?

[tehcyder]

He is, it's called Crime. Contrary to popular belief, most criminals do get caught.

That is a meaningless statement, as nobody knows how many unreported crimes there are, nor how many criminals have never registered on the authorities radar.

Re:What's not to like?

[tehcyder]

The guilty plea certainly makes it seem like this is a case where computer fraud was handled correctly by the system

Unfortunately in the US's legal system many innocent people are forced to plead guilty by threats of excess punishment. When you don't have evidence to prove your innocence pleading guilty is sometimes the wise choice.

You don't need evidence to prove you're innocent. You'd only plead guilty if the prosecution had strong evidence of your guilt, plus you were actualy guilty.

Re:What's not to like?

[tehcyder]

If its an open and shut case, they will happily send innocent men to jail.

If they're framing an innocent person, it obviously wasn't an open and shut case then, was it?

Re:What's not to like?

[tehcyder]

My point is, does that mean that if I get to crack the WPA security of my neighbors, I should just do whatever I want on their network, including illegal attacks and downloading illegal content, and well "Bad luck I manage to crack your security and screwup your life"?

No.

Re:What's not to like?

[Ash Vince]

The article is rather sparse on details, but what interests me is that Ardolf didn't succeed in his "this'll get the dude in trouble" plan; what led the police to believe that the access point had been 'hacked'? What security was used, for that matter? Were there logs?

The guilty plea certainly makes it seem like this is a case where computer fraud was handled correctly by the system, and since the courts often seem to make the mistake that 'IP address == person' it'd be good to see how they went about distinguishing the actual criminal from the victim here.

This is the scary thing about this case. I bet in most cases it would have succeeded but in this case the next door neighbour in question worked for a law firm so his company had easy access to private detectives. The private detective put on the case was the one who figured it out, not the police. Here is a better link regarding the story that has a few more details:

http://www.startribune.com/local/north/112080854.html?elr=KArks:DCiUHc3E7_V_nDaycUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUoD3aPc:_2yc:a_ncyD_MDCiU

It is also interesting that the neighbours had a previous beef with the guy: He had picked up and kissed their small child so he probably didn't have to look to far to get the child porn he planted. Although this couple have obviously been through hell at least they now don't have to worry about the weirdo next door going anywhere near their kid.

Re:What's not to like?

[Anonymous Coward]

Technically speaking you're mostly correct. To be *literally* a criminal, you have to be guilty of a crime, and since the only way to be found guilty of a crime (at least in the US) is through a court of law, by definition all criminals have been caught, tried, and found guilty.

If you're not discovered, you're not a criminal, because you haven't been found to have committed a crime.

[/pedant]

Re:What's not to like?

[Ash Vince]

Also, did the guy hack it, or just get access to it since it was left without proper security, as I would not consider it "hacking" to access the neighbor's wireless.

Apparrently in this case he had at least passed Script Kiddie 101. He used a password cracking tool to brute force it.

Thinking about it this would work on me since my WPA2 password is set to a dictionary word. In my case though I only allow trusted devices so have to manually allow each device by logging in to the router with a secure admin password (only available via LAN, not from outside). Makes it a bit harder when I get a new phone or laptop but not a massive problem.

The problem with just trusting WPA2 is that a neighbour like this can have an awful lot of time to run a cracking tool against it. Does your router log all bad WPA2 keys that are tried against it? Even if it does how many people are actually that diligent at checking their logs? I have enough of that at work so I have not checked mine in ages at home.

This is the problem when your wifi extends outside your property, whoever has unrestricted private access to that area can spend all the time they need until they bypass whatever security you have in place. Even thinking about my case above you could maybe sniff the MAC address of one of my trusted devices using your own access point and spoof that in order to start cracking the WPA2 password.

Re:What's not to like?

[Anonymous Coward]

What technology? ... the radio button for 'use WPA2'?

Re:What's not to like?

[Kilrah_il]

+5 Insightful and a smile of pedantic joy (no sarcasm).

Re:What's not to like?

[mldi]

The good thing about WiFi hacking is that you have to be nearby. Which means I'll find you.

Not necessarily...

I remember reading about a guy who was receiving WiFi to his place from town... over 7 miles away... over a freakin' huge hill. Sadly, I am unable to locate the link for that one. I think he used a small satellite dish from his place, then put some yagis on a tree on top of the hill that had clear line of sight to both his place and whatever was providing the WiFi.

Imagine trying to find out who's stealing your WiFi when the person's doing something like that...

Re:What's not to like?

[jarlsberg71]

I have a wireless router with no security. My nearest neighbors are 1/4 mile away, and I'm sure their church would frown on them using high-gain antennas to hi-jack my signal, being that they're Amish. I want friends and family to come in and use their smart phones, laptops, etc, without needing to give out long pass-phrases. On a good day I can still get wireless at the mailbox, But it's iffy. If the letter carrier wants to hop on, have at it.

Re:What's not to like?

[Kilrah_il]

Although you have a point, I think it is safe to assume that if someone's house is broken into, he will report it. The same is true for most violent crimes.
I agree it is a bit more problematic for White-Collar and technological crimes, since many times the victim is unaware of being attacked. Although the uncaught criminal rate may be higher than in violent crimes, I still think most are caught. And sorry, no citation.

Re:What's not to like?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a Roku and a Wii and both of them are on my WPA2 network. While I am sure there are many legacy devices out there that only do WEP (I used to have one; just can't remember right now what it was), the Roku and the Wii are not among them.

Re:What's not to like?

[djdavetrouble]

Although you have a point, I think it is safe to assume that if someone's house is broken into, he will report it. The same is true for most violent crimes.
I agree it is a bit more problematic for White-Collar and technological crimes, since many times the victim is unaware of being attacked. Although the uncaught criminal rate may be higher than in violent crimes, I still think most are caught. And sorry, no citation.

Actually you are wrong. Less than 50% of these cases are ever cleared.
Source: 2006,2007 FBI Unified Crime Report (google it)

Re:What's not to like?

[mikechant]

The best thing you can do is to use WPA2 with a long random password full of special characters. Even then you're open to a bruteforce attack.

Disagree. Such a bruteforce attack with the password you describe would be one of those 'will not succeed before the heat death of the universe' type things.

Re:What's not to like?

[Kilrah_il]

I stand corrected, thanks.

Re:What's not to like?

[kalirion]

when you read TFA, it actually just sounds like he was screwing around and the child porn was more like "this'll get the dude in trouble" rather than "I have a private collection because i'm a pedo".

Either way, the dude was really stupid and deserves to get jail time for it.

It wasn't just stupidity. This dude was trying to ruin his neighbor's life and sent him to prison for death threats and child porn. I figure he deserves at least as much jail time as the neighbor would have gotten had the frameup not been uncovered.

Re:What's not to like?

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

Agreed...for now. The problem is we have no idea what turn technology will take in a year so although right now the computer doing the work would fall apart due to its protons decaying, in a few years new hardware could make it a feat doable in just a few hours.

Re:What's not to like?

[Galestar]

Very True. How many of us here have ever "plead guilty" to a lesser charge for a traffic violation?

I got a "careless driving" when I was in an accident a few years back. The officer even told me "we just give you the highest charge because most people plead it down anyways". I ended up doing just that - pleading it down to a lesser offense because I weighed the risks of "2 demerit points and $200" vs "lose your license and $700", multiplied by the probability of each. Pleading guilty is never proof of guilt.

Re:What's not to like?

[cool_arrow]

"victimless" crimes are not even reported (drug deals, prostitution etc) but are crimes nonetheless.

Re:What's not to like?

[clone52431]

You could always set up a cheap wireless router with WEP and configure it to let only the specific traffic needed by those to pass through it. Whitelisting the required ports and blacklisting the rest would be pretty effective.

Then sure, it’s not that hard to break into the WEP-encrypted network, but you don’t get anything useful once you’re in. Unless you just want to hijack your neighbour’s internet to play Wii online, which is pretty sad, but at least not terribly likely to get him in trouble with the law.

Re:What's not to like?

[clone52431]

"Would use of those Yahoo accounts be traceable through forensic analysis of the computer that accessed it?"
"yes"

The prosecutor, or their expert witness, would be much, much too smart to trap themselves with an answer like that.

Re:What's not to like?

[Idarubicin]

Cross reference which neighbours don't have their own net connections with a motive (who had a grudge against him).

Ah yes, using the tried-and-true CSI:Miami-approved "People Without Internet At Home" database. We'll have our suspect in time for the first commercial break.

Unless, of course, the neighbor actually has his own wired internet connection, and just connects through the victim's router when he wants to do something incriminating. Just sayin'.

Re:What's not to like?

[amicusNYCL]

This article makes it sound like he used a WEP-cracking utility:

He created e-mail accounts in Matt Kostolnik's name and used a password-cracking program to hack into the Kostolniks' wireless router.

Re:What's not to like?

[Idarubicin]

Chances are it was wide open, no security. The guy does not sound bright enough to have even hacked WEP, let alone anything stronger.

The Star Tribune says different. He's at least smart enough to be a script kiddie.

He created e-mail accounts in Matt Kostolnik's name and used a password-cracking program to hack into the Kostolniks' wireless router.

The article also raises an interesting point about how the police determined that the victims here weren't at fault. I can't say whether or not the police would have worked this out on their own, but in this case they didn't have to. The victim (Kostolnik) worked for a law firm. When the creepy neighbor started sending forged, defamatory emails to Kostolnik's boss and coworkers, the firm hired their own investigator who was able to determine that the router had been hijacked.

Re:What's not to like?

[Gadgetfreak]

Agreed. Wide open WiFi creates reasonable doubt.

  That's why I use my neighbor's for my MPAA/RIAA torrents, and mine's on WPA2 and doesn't broadcast. If they get a C&D, they can play dumb, which I don't think will take any actual acting.

Re:What's not to like?

[pclminion]

But it's trivial to figure out what MAC to spoof, especially if you're not using WEP and relying entirely on MAC filtering. Just sniff the air -- you'll see packets from a legit host, MAC address and all. Take that MAC, there you go. A friend of mine in the early 2000's used to do this all the time on cruise liners, when they didn't offer wireless to their customers yet. The APs were unencrypted but MAC-locked. He just sniffed a valid MAC and away to the Internet he went. It's trivial.

Re:What's not to like?

[gknoy]

I would assume that "filtering" also includes whitelisting: only those with specific MAC address are allowed to connect, in addition to the passkey requirement. It's inconvenient when you go to add your Wii, laptop, mobile phone, or visiting-friend's-laptop, but worth it for peace of mind. Are there any weaknesses in doing this? (I'm betting that a dedicated attacker could sniff traffic and harvest MACs that are whitelisted, right?) More importantly, what's a better alternative, and what makes it better? (Wireless networking newbies like me would like to know.)

Re:What's not to like?

[pclminion]

The good thing about WiFi hacking is that you have to be nearby.

Uhh, check that assumption. I know a guy who uses a parabolic antenna with a signal amplifier. I think the furthest he's been able to connect is over a mile (some AP he picked up across the river). Connection quality wasn't great but it was there. Instead of wardriving, we can hang out for an afternoon and "war-drink" which involves drinking beer on the roof while pivoting the antenna around. You can pick up dozens of APs without even moving.

And of course, they've demonstrated 50-mile distances at various DEFCON events over the years.

Re:What's not to like?

[bckrispi]

You'd only plead guilty if the prosecution had strong evidence of your guilt, plus you were actualy guilty.

Naive much?

Re:What's not to like?

[bckrispi]

Or, just cut the wireless crap and dig out the patch cables.

Re:What's not to like?

[bckrispi]

It's here He was angry at the neighbors for filing a police report on him. Apparently they called the cops after he grabbed and kissed their four year old kid.

Re:What's not to like?

[GameboyRMH]

Remember, when searching the database, for each record show a picture of the associated person and as much other information on-screen as possible, to waste 99.999% of all processing power on the system. This keeps the CPU usage up for the otherwise idle government supercomputer clusters, don't let those taxpayer dollars go to waste!

Re:What's not to like?

[mcgrew]

Contrary to popular belief, most criminals do get caught.

Bullshit. Or in the slashdot vernacular, [citation needed]. I constantly see accounts of burglaries in the local paper, but seldom see accounts of burglars being arrested. I've seen lots of fistfights first hand, and although battery is a crime, seldom do I see any of them being arrested. Distribution of certain drugs is illegal, but there's no shortage whatever of any substance you want.

I can see where stories like this might lead one to believe that most criminals get caught; a quote: "'I feel confident that we have put a significant dent into drug distribution on our streets,' said Springfield Police Chief Robert Williams in a press release." Yes, of course he's going to say that, but he's wrong -- that's just a tiny percentage of dope dealers here. Note thtat that's the only story in today's paper about people getting caught, in contrast to these stories from the same newspaper:
Baby Jesus stolen from southwestern Ill. display
Watch, GPS unit stolen from South 12th Street house
Video games, DVD player stolen
Wire stolen from East Cedar Street home
Copper pipe taken from South Grand Avenue business
Break-in at school probed
License plate stolen
Equipment, tools taken
Scammers using politician's name to collect funds
Two televisions stolen from Boxwood Court home
Woman robbed of phone, car key

Do the math. Crime does indeed pay.

Re:What's not to like?

[Kilrah_il]

Well, time for a change of occupation. Can you please send me your home address... Don't ask why, you'll find-out after coming back from your Christmas vacation.

Re:What's not to like?

[gplus]

a quote: "'I feel confident that we have put a significant dent into drug distribution on our streets,' said Springfield Police Chief Robert Williams in a press release."

His name is Wiggum, not Williams. And the first name is Clancy.

Re:What's not to like?

[amRadioHed]

Do you understand how many orders of magnitude faster your computer would have to be in order to make something possible in a reasonable time frame when it currently that takes longer then the heat death of the universe? That sort of a technological improvement is unlikely to say the least.

Re:What's not to like?

[mcgrew]

Well, those cartoonists get everything wrong. take Futurama, for instance. It's Leila, not Leela. And she's not a mutant, her sister is. And it's not one eye, it's one kidney. And they didn't say a word about her dad being a cyborg.

And Groening never mentioned that Homer's sister in law is an alderman.

Re:What's not to like?

[Anonymous Coward]

I used WEP ... Now, my router is secure

No, it is specifically not secure, as you stated it is running WEP for security. That is like putting scotch tape over your unlocked car door to keep people from "breaking" in to it.

Re:What's not to like?

[Anonymous Coward]

Any lock "can be open even with a credit card" if you know the right locksmith....

Re:What's not to like?

[Cwix]

I replied to similar comments earlier. Its a layer of security, it cant hurt.

If you'll note I specifically said "It by no means is a great or even good security practice"

That layer may help keep a script kiddie off. Will it keep off someone determined? No, it will not. The more layers in your security the better though.

Re:What's not to like?

[tunghoy]

Don't router logs usually show MAC address? The cops should be able to figure out at least that the perp's computer is Brand XYZ and manufactured around a certain date and lord-knows-what-else a MAC shows. That's my guess anyway.

Re:What's not to like?

[instarx]

"your circle of suspects is limited to what you can measure with a standard hard ware store carpenters tape measure."

Could have been a drive-by.

Re:What's not to like?

[Coren22]

Yep, it happened shortly after they invented the time machine. Unfortunately, tense is a little hard to determine when time travel comes into play.

Re:What's not to like?

[AntariMysteec]

Careful assuming that WPA or WPA2 is fully secure; it's not. Granted it's not as easy to hack but it can be. The only true secure consumer level wireless is using a hardwire instead. Consumer level devices need more support for rotating keys which will help immensely with security.

Re:What's not to like?

[AntariMysteec]

The police, FBI, and Secret service could not watch the traffic without a wiretap warrant and from what I was understanding from them a judge would not issue one. I was however allowed to watch it since I was being paid to do so. If I was not paid then that would have been another issue. In addition the police didn't know how to read PCAPs and there's a lot more to that but I'll leave that comment where it stands.

Re:What's not to like?

[AntariMysteec]

The firewall log was the first thing that showed someone else was connecting at the time the emails were being sent. I was not able to account for certain MAC addresses attaching during the events. That pretty much proved that it wasn't the neighbor. From there it was a long road to catch the hacker. And you're right, ip address != person; I had to get a lot more than that to finger the hacker.

Re:What's not to like?

[AntariMysteec]

From what I understood, if the wireless was unsecured the charge of accessing a secured network would not have been used and it would have changed other things in the case as well.

Re:What's not to like?

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

While some people don't expect someone else to connect to their router, leaving a router without a password IS the stand practice for telling people it is ok to use the router.

Eh? Since when and according to whom? While for small subset of the wifi-using population what you said is true, I challenge you to find anything that says MOST people who use poor or no encryption WANT people to use their connections.

If you want a car theft analogy, you would need to have a society where lots of people, and even more businesses let people use their cars without explicit permission, every car comes standard with a sign bolted on and unremovable that says "Do Not Use Without Permission", and you decided to have the sign folded down so that a stranger looking to use your car cannot see it.

I love this. Another example of why it's a bad idea to use a car analogy here (I should have known better) -- because without fail, some commenter will always take it to the point of absurdity. Either because though some mental gymnastics they've convinced themselves that their extension of the analogy somehow makes it more accurate (I think yours falls into this category); or they're trying [unsuccessfully] to make the original post appear absurd via some odd verbal thaumaturgy.

I used the analogy to make a simple and valid point. Probably best to let it die there, and come up with a more appropriate analogy to demonstrate your counterpoint.

Re:What's not to like?

[Belial6]

The very fact that you put the word 'poor' in there shows a complete lack of good faith in the conversation. Even the most minimal encryption is a sign that it is not for public consumption. So, how many have open wifi and intend for the public to use it? HUGE numbers. It is particularly common for businesses.

You are right. Your car analogy was a bad idea. Particularly because it was a bad analogy. Of course, you obviously already knew that, and just planned on saying that anyone who pointed it out was doing mental gymnastics.

Very simply there is no mental gymnastics in understanding that every router comes with a way to either publicly announce it is there, or just quietly exist. They also all come with a no trespassing sign. It takes mental gymnastics to rationalize that someone has a legitimate complaint when they publicly announces that they have a publicly available resource and don't put out the do not use sign that is right there for them to use.

Re:What's not to like?

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Still I'm not seeing anything resembling evidence to back this claim up. Yes, people can disable security. Yes, some people who don't deliberately do this to allow shared access. Emphasis, though, on *some* -- on what basis would you assume otherwise?

Many older devices never shipped with these protections enabled. Even today many devices still ship with a standard default password. A startling number still ship with weak (eg breakable in 2 min or less) encryption as the default. (Kind of like a rolled up window but an unlocked door in that hypothetical car we're flogging) In no case do I see lack of awareness and/or general stupidity as reasonably equivalent to handing out an open invitation.

I was wondering why you kept emphasizing *no* security as opposed to limited/poor security, so I re-read the conversation. OP write this:

). There are way too many people who buy wireless routers, hook them up, and never touch the security because they know nothing about it. At that point kid, stick to wired, as it is simple

And I wrote this:

;) Just because it's easy to attach to someone's unsecured network doesn't mean doing so is acceptable

I should have been more specific in my word choice - by unsecured I meant no specific steps taken by the user to secure it beyond what's done in the factory configuration. On older models that means no security; while on many current models it means WEP or a default/guessable password under WPA2.

So let's limit it to devices with no security at all, since my apparent lack of clarity seems to have introduced some confusion. Many routers older than 3-4 years shipped with no security. People aren't going to replace this equipment if it's still working for them -- and this alone speaks against your theory of "unsecured == invitation". If default security is no security, then leaving default security in place through ignorance cannot be construed as an invitation.

Re:What's not to like?

[Belial6]

No, it isn't because you said 'unsecured' earlier. The reason I say 'unsecured' is because every wireless router comes with two features. One is the ability to publicly announce that it is available for use. The other is the ability to say that while I am publicly announcing it is available to use, I am limiting who I want to use it.

You don't like your own car analogy. Fine. Lets use the beer analogy. If you show up to a party with a six pack of beer, and 'announce' "Hey everybody, I brought beer, then proceed to put the beer out with all of the beer that was brought for other people to share, you have no right to complain when someone drinks your beer. On the other hand, if you put a note on your beer that says "This beer is for Prince Adam only". Then someone that drinks your beer has stolen it.

The fact that you cannot read or write does not mean your lack of securing your beer is the other guests problem. They did nothing wrong treating your beer just like all the other free beer that was willingly supplied to them.

Given that there are hundreds of thousands of unsecured wireless routers around the country that are in fact inviting you to use them for free, yes "unsecured == invitation". That is the only way that it can work.

From a technical standpoint. Your invitation without any blocking mechanism is an invitation.

From a practical standpoint the only way for there to be public and private wifi is to use a 'no trespassing' sign on the private networks.

Again, the fact that people bought routers that by default declared themselves to be publicly accessible, does not mean that they are not broadcasting an invitation.

Re:What's not to like?

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

I would say that broadcasting availability is not the same as broadcasting an invitation.

I think we're going to have to agree to disagree - both on the suitable analogy front (as I don't think yours fit very well, and I can come up with a ton more than you don't agree with) and on the actual issue we're talking about. We both know we're not going to convince each other; and this is an old enough discussion that we no longer have an audience reading our undoubtedly brilliant and enlightened commentary.

** thePowerOfGreySkull walks off into the sunrise, leaving a six-pack of ice-cold beer inside of his idling and unlocked car

They never said how he got caught?

[Anonymous Coward]

And no statement from the guy he tried to frame? News sucks nowadays, even for nerds.

Sigh...

[gnarfel]

Aw come on dude...child porn too? Gross.

Re:Tea Party strikes again!

[DJ Particle]

To be fair, the governor of Minnesota at the time the emails were sent (Tim Pawlenty) is a Republican, and the only sitting senator of Minnesota was Amy Klobuchar (Democrat), as Franken's win was not yet certified in February 2009. This was not partisan, this was simply him hating his neighbor.

Re:Tea Party strikes again!

[DJ Particle]

Addendum: How much legal headache did his neighbor go through before Ardolf was suspected? The article doesn't say

In all fairness...

[DWMorse]

In all fairness, I live in Minnesota. I can vouch that there's just not much else to do around here in the winter.

Re:In all fairness...

[MichaelKristopeit314]

if anything, there is more to do... but continue with the excuses you use to justify your inactivity.

Re:In all fairness...

[HornWumpus]

Trolling /. was likely not on DWMorse's agenda you nutjob.

Re:In all fairness...

[Anonymous Coward]

Lunatics like you with no sense of humor.

That's why I'm hiding too!

Re:In all fairness...

[garcia]

Oh bullshit. I've been doing plenty of shoveling lately. Yup, you betcha.

Re:In all fairness...

[MichaelKristopeit317]

so you're intimidated by the truth?

you're completely pathetic.

Re:In all fairness...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mods, this is a joke. If you lived in MN you'd get it. Sad.

Re:In all fairness...

[Anonymous Coward]

Troll:

http://slashdot.org/~MichaelKristopeit300

... verified consecutive accounts from 300--320 inclusive ...

http://slashdot.org/~MichaelKristopeit320

Re:In all fairness...

[Anonymous Coward]

You "get it" also if you've ever watched FARGO--no need to live in MN (or be from MN).

Re:In all fairness...

[Anonymous Coward]

so you're intimidated by the truth?

So you admit that the truth is you're a lunatic without a sense of humor?

Re:In all fairness...

[chip_s_ahoy]

Wait!!!! I'm still stuck on "HornWumpus". Is that a cool name, or something from Harry Potter?

Re:In all fairness...

[Anonymous Coward]

He's probably intimidated by you being an obvious lunatic.

Re:In all fairness...

[Anonymous Coward]

there's always ice phishing, no?

Re:In all fairness...

[MichaelKristopeit327]

it's something that grows between your mothers legs.

Re:In all fairness...

[MichaelKristopeit323]

he's probably intimidated by ur mum's face being an obvious lunatic.

cower some more, feeb.

you're completely pathetic.

Re:In all fairness...

[Anonymous Coward]

no, u!

Re:In all fairness...

[MichaelKristopeit325]

present yourself to me; admit what you've done, then i'll bring unto you the ultimate punishment for your transgressions.

cower some more, feeb.

you're completely pathetic.

Re:In all fairness...

[Anonymous Coward]

I like this list, for a better idea of just how long this troll has been around (most of the accounts are probably banned, though):

edrugtrader madddddddddd Michael Kristopeit Michael D Kristopeit M. D. Kristopeit M. Kristopeit Kristopeit, Michael Kristopeit, M. D. Mike Kristopeit Mike D. Kristopeit Kristopeit, Mike D. MichaelDavKristopeit Mike Dav. Kristopeit MichaelDa.Kristopeit Mike Da. Kristopeit Kristopeit, Mike Da. Kristopeit, Mike Kristopeit, Mike Dav Kristopeit,MichaelDa Mike Davi Kristopeit Michael Kristopeit 2 ... Michael Kristopeit 9 Michael Kristopeit 1 Mike Kristopeit 1 ... Mike Kristopeit 9 MichaelKristopeit 10 ... MichaelKristopeit 15 Mike Kristopeit 10 ... Mike Kristopeit 16 MichaelKristopeit 17 ... MichaelKristopeit 20 MichaelKristopeit 22 ... MichaelKristopeit 60 MichaelKristopeit 69 ... MichaelKristopeit 61 MichaelKristopeit 70 MichaelKristopeit 80 ... MichaelKristopeit 86 MichaelKristopeit130 MichaelKristopeit 92 MichaelKristopeit 94 MichaelKristopeit 95 MichaelKristopeit 97 MichaelKristopeit 98 MichaelKristopeit 89

Re:In all fairness...

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, go get help before you wind up like the guy in this story.

Re:In all fairness...

[kilfarsnar]

No, but it's always on MichaelKristopeit312's agenda...

Re:In all fairness...

[MichaelKristopeit321]

i don't require help. you are not authorized to prescribe.

you're exactly what you've claimed to be: NOTHING.

why do you cower? what are you afraid of?

you're completely pathetic.

Re:In all fairness...

[Anonymous Coward]

lol (not with you)

Re:In all fairness...

[MichaelKristopeit328]

you are with no one.

you're exactly what you've claimed to be: NOTHING

why do you cower? what are you afraid of?

you're completely pathetic.

curious...

[binaryseraph]

wonder how he got caught...

Re:curious...

[Anonymous Coward]

wonder how he got caught...

Probably named his machine 'barryvan' or something similar. But no, it's actually quite simple.

Once they realized the IP it came from, tracked down the registered user through the ISP and talked to them (most likely in a jail cell), looked through his machine and realized hey maybe this guy didn't do it. I'm sure at that point they looked at the router's logs and noticed multiple MACs. Then it is just a matter of tracking down exactly which house (and with the range of wifi, that is not a lot you need to track) and getting subpoenas for each one. Matching up the MAC and you are done.

Re:curious...

[by (1706743)]

Likewise. Did he spoof his MAC address to match his neighbor's? Not doing so would certainly raise suspicions in the AP's log.

Re:curious...

[Anonymous Coward]

wonder how he got caught...

If it was a Verizon router, the MAC logs would do it, if he used hi own MAC. And yes, Verizon can remotely access THEIR OWN (see: leasing) routers, and log MACs. All you really need to do to leave a pattern is to log onto two or more Verizon routers with the same MAC, and they are potentially able to effectively triangulate you based any history sessions which left behind any identifying information. It may still be too complicated for Verizon to contact google and ask for information on who's been logging into their gmail, or yahoo account, but when it comes to threatening politicians and kiddy porn, I suspect they'd make an exception. Oh, and now Verizon is kind of part of google, and that must make everything easier. And of course, there are other ways he could have been caught.

Re:curious...

[binaryseraph]

The only thing I can think of is that the neighbor starts finding this suspicious stuff about them online. Calls the cops (or the cops call him) and then start pulling records off the wireless router.. Like you said the MAC address should be recorded. They may have been able to subpoena (or not, thanks patriot act) the local ISP's and start pulling mac addresses from the neighborhood.

lesson learned heh.

Re:curious...

[Anonymous Coward]

Somehow I doubt that someone who doesn't secure his wifi sets his router up to keep logs.
More likely they waited for that idiot to connect to the router again.

Re:curious...

[CitizenCain]

It's not even that hard or involved. Assuming the "hacker" uses wifi himself, it's pretty trivial to monitor packets in the neighborhood, find the offending device and use simple triangulation to locate the house the device is in.

Re:curious...

[icebraining]

Most cheap routers I know have a "DHCP log page" in their administration area, no need to set anything up.
But your theory is valid too.

Re:curious...

[Opportunist]

Maybe Mr. Bright didn't stop sending out threatening letters after the mark got arrested?

First rule when framing someone: Stop when he's behind bars.

Re:curious...

[zn0k]

> The only thing I can think of is that the neighbor starts finding this suspicious stuff about them online. Calls the cops (or the cops call him) and then start pulling records off the wireless router.. Like you said the MAC address should be recorded. They may have been able to subpoena (or not, thanks patriot act) the local ISP's and start pulling mac addresses from the neighborhood.

That isn't how networks work.

MAC addresses are used on layer 2 broadcast domains. For an ISP to have seen the MAC address of his wireless card he would have to use that wireless card to directly connect to the ISP. That is fairly unlikely.

Re:curious...

[clone52431]

Like you said the MAC address should be recorded. They may have been able to subpoena (or not, thanks patriot act) the local ISP

The MAC address should be recorded on the access point (AP, as GP stated), which means the wireless router of the customer. The ISP has no ability to see the MAC addresses of the individual devices on the user’s end of the network.

Of course this is predicated upon the assumption that the wireless router has MAC logging enabled... though I think most of them would, at least, show the MAC addresses of all devices currently connected to the network, even if logging is disabled. However note that two devices with the same MAC address (because one of them cloned the MAC address of the other) would be completely indistinguishable from each other, from the wireless router’s perspective. In fact they’d both be able to see all of the traffic intended for both of them, too, although any packets that weren’t expected would just be ignored, so they probably wouldn’t conflict with each other.

Go Big

[DreamArcher]

Why the vice pres. If he's going to go that far why not go all the way?

Re:Go Big

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the president is black and then it would have been a hate crime... see?! hate crime legislation pays off!

Re:Go Big

[Anonymous Coward]

Can it be said to die that which can forever lie?

Re:Go Big

[CitizenCain]

My thinking would be that a threat against the president would be more likely to be overlooked - typically there are hundreds of threats against the president's life every year. The vice-president, on the other hand probably doesn't receive many death threats, since that particular position is largely useless (at least in the American system).

Re:Go Big

[MightyMartian]

I doubt the guy was concerned about that. Child porn trumps hate crime laws any day of the week.

Re:Go Big

[MightyMartian]

Biden (running into the Oval Office): Barry, look, I got mail!

Obama: Joe, I thought I told you to wipe your shoes before you came in the door.

Biden: Sorry, Barry. But look it's mail, and hate mail even! Someone out there cares! They really care!

Obama (picking up the phone): Could I get some Secret Service in here. Someone let the Gimp out of his cage again... Yeah, that's right. Put him in the Cheney Room this time... no need to remove the rack and the car battery.

Open your wifi

[Anonymous Coward]

"Another good reason to make sure your wireless is secured!..."

Actually this a reason to open your wifi. Do whatever you want with plausible deniability.

Re:Open your wifi

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you convince a jury of 12 this? Remember, most people on a jury have zero clue about Wi-Fi, and the defense rattling off technical details will cause eyes to glaze over.

The prosecution has an easy message: The illegal stuff came from the guy's Wi-Fi.

Most people are trained that possession == guilty just like if there is marijuana in a car, it automatically is owned by the driver. This is actual court precedent. So, even though the packets were made by someone unknown, the device is in the possession of the defendant, and thus he or she is guilty.

The victim of this was damn lucky. Most people that got framed by this would be farting mayonnaise and ketchup in a max security Federal prison.

Re:Open your wifi

[Opportunist]

Effing kidding? You know who you're dealing with, right?

First, you're dealing with a police that can, with 2 weeks training, find the "on" button on a computer. They see:
1. Hate mail to prez.
2. ISP says it's him.
3. cuff him, seize everything and his dog and have the geeks in the basement of the office sieve it.
4. interrogate him 'til he cracks.

They have no idea what WiFi is and that it can actually be used by someone who isn't you. The computer freaks at the ISP said it's your computer that sent it, so it's your computer that sent it. Of course they said that it came from the IP of this subscriber, but ... IP, computer, router, WiFi, toaster, it's YOURS so YOU'RE IT!

And should this ever go to court, you're facing 12 people who have about as much a clue of WiFi deciding whether or not you go in the slammer.

Now decide: Put your faith in these computer illiterates or WPA.

Re:Open your wifi

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you convince a jury of 12 this? Remember, most people on a jury have zero clue about Wi-Fi, and the defense rattling off technical details will cause eyes to glaze over.

Which pre-supposes it goes that far.....

The prosecution has an easy message:

And the defense have a duty to due diligence, which might even maybe extend to hiring a forensic investigator

The illegal stuff came from the guy's Wi-Fi

Prove it.

Most people are trained that possession == guilty

I don't think that means what you think it means.

just like if there is marijuana in a car, it automatically is owned by the driver.

Stop right there! Stop trying to impersonate someone who has a the faintest clue what they're talking about. It is a serious threat to any one who uses the internet - but overblown histrionics aren't helpful.

This is actual court precedent.

No. It is not (an "actual" court precedent). It is the law. Find a lawyer and enquire as to the meaning of "reversal of onus". Hint: it doesn't apply in this case.

The rest of your post is just overexcited discharge

Whilst I know this sort of attempted smear campaign *can* lead to the person being smeared being under suspicion - and being charged (in my case). The sort of arseclowns who try these stunts are never as "IT savvy" as they, or the prosecutors think. The sort of people who post in these threads what they "think" is how they'd frame some one, and get away with it. The jails are full of experts like them - and I'm certainly not going to point out the weaknesses in their sure-fire-4chan schemes (hint: fools and/are tools).

People do bad shit to each other all the time - for less than good reasons.

Get cynical, get wise. The more you have to lose - the more you have to protect

*Practice* good security, it won't guarantee your protection, but it'll reduce the odds.

Hire a good legal professional - do your research - do not panic, be prepared to spend time in the lockup if necessary - but do not settle for less than competent representation. (yeah it sucks, it ain't fair, boo hoo, grow up, my missus wasn't a virgin when I met her etc) and, seriously - sell your children, your kidneys and lie through your teeth about grandma's will, do whatever you have to do to get the sharpest defense you can rent. (here it means, get a solicitor to retain a barrister to brief a QC). I'm guessing the American equivalent is to outnumber and outshine the prosecutions team.

Get your defense to hire the best forensics possible, and you may not even have to go to court. (I worked in a building with logged swipe keys, CCD cameras and network logging - it didn't take long to demonstrate I couldn't have done all the alleged posting and downloading - the charges were dropped and the police arrested the guilty party the next week.

They are plenty of stupid police, but not all are stupid and/or corrupt (or all-of-the-time at least). But their is a definite lack of financial and technical resources - rightly or wrongly we/you/I have to make up that short-fall.

There will always be people who think I'm guilty of downloading CP - I can't do shit about that. But I don't have a criminal record, I have my clearance back, and I've heard the police are a lot more careful about their investigations now.

Do not let the case get to court - Legal Aid (public defenders) are unlikely to be able to do that.

A vigorous defense is what all liberties derive from. Like it or lump it, we may have no choice - if it's not CP it could be "terrorism", "treachery", or just posting about Wikileaks.

I got framed because a colleague thought it unfair that I should have a job they wanted when it was "rumoured" that I had been a "hacker" nearly twenty years ago. That is "rumoured", I'd never been asked about it, my n

Re:Open your wifi

[kilfarsnar]

The victim of this was damn lucky. Most people that got framed by this would be farting mayonnaise and ketchup in a max security Federal prison.

Man, you know way too much about prison lube. And now I do too!

Derangement

[RyanFenton]

Politics is important - it is composed almost entirely of things that are important to people, almost by definition of what becomes political. I totally get that.

What I don't get is why so many folks let themselves uniquely be turned into raving lunatics about politics - especially given how important the issues are to them.

If you have a mission, and that mission is important - you need to focus. Turning explosive (figuratively, or literally when you mix in religion) might seem a good way to get attention on something that is overlooked - but if you pay any attention to how political events turn out, it rarely has a positive net effect.

I also understand that a good number of folks are just crazy to begin with - but something about politics seems to flip a obsession switch in ordinarily constructive people, while flipping off the part of the mind willing to consider other points of view as helpful or useful.

I'll certainly agree - Obama will likely be remembered as a rather bad president - something of a combination of the worst aspects of Carter and Bush in terms of policy, approach, and effectiveness. You can't let the presence of what you consider a bad person in power let you destroy yourself in response though - that defeats your very purpose of disagreeing, and invalidates your point entirely.

Sure - the Tea Party is getting the news cycles, and is certainly disrupting the Democratic party. But in the process, it is making itself so nasty, that the revolution it is seeking is quickly becoming self-defeating, like France and its many counter-revolutions. Crazy will do in a brawl - but the most important bits of politics don't work in anyone's favor if all you can do is brawl - and the crazy won't want to be put away.

In most nations, crazy politics is seen as a shameful thing - something only failed states let dominate their politics, lest they fall into decades of senseless war. True - you can't capitulate yourself away from a bully, nor should you bow to the demands of the cruel and selfish (see: Obama), but you don't have to be crazy to make a principled stand, or to speak softly while holding a large political stick.

Ryan Fenton

Re:Derangement

[Hatta]

What I don't get is why so many folks let themselves uniquely be turned into raving lunatics about politics - especially given how important the issues are to them.

Because the law is fucking insane. For instance, we live in a country where it's considered an appropriate and measured response to throw someone in prison, and confiscate their home, for growing a plant that's some people disapprove of. How do you deal with that rationally?

If you have a mission, and that mission is important - you need to focus. Turning explosive (figuratively, or literally when you mix in religion) might seem a good way to get attention on something that is overlooked - but if you pay any attention to how political events turn out, it rarely has a positive net effect.

The problem is, nothing really has a positive effect. It's been a steady slide down towards authoritarian corporatism for all of my 30 years in this country. Every last tiny shred of hope has been crushed out of me. There is no chance for change besides another American Revolution. Unfortunately, I don't see it coming in my lifetime. All I can do is keep my head down and try not to get caught up in the machine. If anything, I'm surprised we haven't seen more people flip out. The situation definitely calls for it.

Re:Derangement

[east coast]

His threats against Biden had nothing to do with politics. Had it been McCain in office Palin would have gotten the death threat instead. It seems that he wanted revenge against his neighbors and was sane enough to understand that the local cops were worthless in matters of cyber crime and wanted to insure that semi-competent agents of the law got involved.

Re:Derangement

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have a mission, and that mission is important - you need to focus. Turning explosive (figuratively, or literally when you mix in religion) might seem a good way to get attention on something that is overlooked - but if you pay any attention to how political events turn out, it rarely has a positive net effect.

I don't agree - violence/violent provocation is, on the whole, very successful at achieving its political aims, at least in the short term.

Gavrilo Princip killed the Archduke of Austria hoping to start a war that would lead to the creation of a wider Serbian state. Within four years, Yugoslavia was born.

Yigal Amir assassinated the prime minister of Israel to prevent the signing of the Oslo Accords. The PM's successor withdrew support for all of Israel's most significant concessions and the treaty never saw the light of day.

McVeigh's bombing of the Murrah Federal Building didn't lead to the general uprising he had hoped for, but it did bolster flagging support for conservatives; in 1995, the Democrats seem poised for an easy ride back into power. Yet by 1996, it was clear that Republicans would maintain control of both houses of Congress. They spent the next four years investigating the president, thereby pre-empting his entire policy agenda.

In 1999, Ariel Sharon was an aging extremist whose run for prime minister was considered largely symbolic. In 2000, he provoked a riot by bringing a bunch of troops to a religious shrine. Within a year, he was elected by a landslide.

Osama Bin-Laden attacked the US with the goal of provoking an all-out conflict between Western and Islamic states. Western soldiers occupy Iraq and Afghanistan because we're still"winning" that one.

Al Queda bombed Madrid in order to undermine support for the Iraq war in that country. Within a day, the new government announced that Spain's troops would be withdrawn.

It's hard to see how any of those people could have achieved goals within a similar timefrime or on a similar scale through any form of peaceful organization or protest. The amount of influence a single individual can have on the political processes
  in a single violent act is pretty terrifying.

Re:Derangement

[omems]

I couldn't agree more. There are so many examples of how the system is broken, how the government, whose stated job is to "establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity", has remorselessly abandoned the people it was elected to govern.

I can't believe there isn't more uproar about this, and yet I know why there isn't, at least for me: I feel completely powerless to affect any change (which is they way he wants it).

But as bad as this is, I don't know that there's anything inherently better. From a programming perspective, we need to make a system that fails gracefully, that defaults to protecting the user.

Re:Derangement

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen brother.

Re:Derangement

[AntariMysteec]

Hard to know for sure... But regardless you cannot threaten a public official (or any citizen for that matter), but the public official will be taken a lot more seriously. You are right, the cops appear to be trained to run prebuild applications and dont understand technology. After all, most of the cops probably had little to nothing to do with technology before they went into their profession. Unforunately for Barry, we were involved long before that...

in b4

[Anonymous Coward]

In before some whiny neckbeard points out this is a "cracker" not a hacker and whines about this supposed misusage of the term.

MAC Address Spoofing

[nuckfuts]

Connecting to a wireless router usually means obtaining IP settings via DHCP. In the process, the MAC address of your network adapter (which is supposed to unique) will be recorded on the router, at least for some period of time. Therefore, if you want to connect without leaving an obvious fingerprint pointing back to your computer, first modify the MAC address that your network card is putting out. On Windows machines, drivers often provide a way to specify your MAC address under the "advanced properties" of the adapter. On my Intel network adapter, for example, the setting is listed as "Locally Administered Address", and is undefined by default.

You might even spoof a specific make of network adapter by choosing an "Organizationally Unique Identifier" from the OUI Public Listing.

Re:MAC Address Spoofing

[Anonymous Coward]

All of that is useless if the "man" comes looking for you and seizes your computer(s).

Which is interesting if you live near anyone that does something illegal. They could end up coming after you and everyone else nearby.

Re:MAC Address Spoofing

[Anonymous Coward]

Regardless, they can obviously still pinpoint your physical location, so there's that little caveat.

Re:MAC Address Spoofing

[apoc.famine]

That only helps if you're religious about changing it back and removing all traces each time you connect for a brief bit of time. Stay connected for a few months doing something that will get you a visit by police/fbi/cia, etc, and you're no better off if they visit while you're still connected, still using the "spoofed" IP address. If you've got a "spoofed MAC address" file on your desktop and they come looking, I'm pretty sure that if that MAC address matches the ones they have logs of, you're still toast, no matter what it is currently.

Sure, I can see how spoofing your MAC address once in awhile to do something on another connection could be useful. But if you leave any trace of it and your machine is picked up and inspected, it doesn't help you any more than if you didn't spoof it in the first place.

Re:MAC Address Spoofing

[Anonymous Coward]

"On Windows machines, drivers often provide a way to specify your MAC address under the "advanced properties" of the adapter" - by nuckfuts (690967) on Tuesday December 21, @08:26PM (#34636760)

NOT DOABLE: Where did you get your information from? There is NO SUCH SETTING in the "advanced properties" of the NIC...

APK

P.S.=> THE ONLY PLACE I HAVE EVER SEEN THIS THAT'S FAIRLY EASY TO DO THIS, IS WITHIN A ROUTER'S SETUP PAGES (LinkSys units for instance offer this)... I thought this advice sounded a "bit off"/strange, so I went & looked into the driver for the NIC's properties here on Windows 7, no such animal exists! apk

This article has a lot of details...

[Anonymous Coward]

The neighbors suspected the guy right away. Fortunately, the investigators listened to the [innocent] neighbors and started looking at the real bad guy.

http://www.startribune.com/local/north/112080854.html?elr=KArks:DCiUHc3E7_V_nDaycUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUoD3aPc:_2yc:a_ncyD_MDCiU

Re:This article has a lot of details...

[wiredmikey]

Good link and that does have lots more on the history prior to the pleading guilty. The article was updated to link to that story for more details.

Re:This article has a lot of details...

[MightyMartian]

Wow! What a creepy evil bastard. And what a goddamned moron, not accepting the plea agreement. He certainly deserves to rot.

Re:Politics

[TaoPhoenix]

Politics is Professional Deal Making, where the name of the game is getting your cut of the proceedings. Actual "fairness" is only used lately when it seems like a useful strategy, oherwise Big Money wins 1-0.

People get freaked about poitics because it's fuzzy judgement zone where the best sneak wins.

Re:Tea Party strikes again!

[Barny]

Likely all his computer equipment confiscated for evidence, some good ol' police questioning (think how bad you would be treated if the police know you were downloading child porn) and of course his local reputation tainted by association with the case.

Of course once forensics failed to find corroborating evidence on his PC that he did the crimes, they would have immediately gone into 'this is a frame up' mode, and he would have been questioned further in regards to who would have a motive to having him arrested.

Until all the paper work is done, the 'I's dotted and the 'T's crossed, he will be without his computer gear, since it would be evidence in the case still.

WPA security is not rocket surgery! ;)

Re:Tea Party strikes again!

[MightyMartian]

I'm assuming a bit. He's going to get hauled in for questioning, his computer(s) forensically searched, and in general live under a cloud for at least a few weeks. My assumption is that the search found nothing, so the cops dug a little deeper. All they really need to do is sit there watching the WiFi router's registrations (pretty much every WiFi router I've seen released in the last decade shows DHCP and WiFi registrations), and then watch what the neighbor is up to. Still, the first assumption the cops are going to have is that the guy with the WiFi is the one downloading the child porn and sending out the death threats, so the onus is going to very much be on him to prove to the cops that he's innocent.

Of course, if he and his neighbor had some sort of an ongoing feud, he may have just told the cops "It wasn't me, but the fucking asshole beside me has been harassing me for some time." If he had some other evidence that he and this guy had had troubles, it could have shortcircuited the whole process and set them on the neighbor's tail in short order.

a recipe

[Larryish]

linux livecd + firefox private browsing + tor + privoxy + spoofed mac address + unsecured neighbor's wifi = teh win

windows user who thinks he is all "hackety hack hack hacker hackety hack" because he uses his neighbor's unsecured wifi = teh suck

Re:a recipe

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah because using a bunch of prewritten programs and a livecd made by someone else makes you a total 1337 h4x0r, right?

Re:a recipe

[east coast]

It wasn't an unsecured access point.

Re:a recipe

[Larryish]

I did not say that, and I do not believe that it was implied in my post.

Thank you.

Re:a recipe

[Sparx139]

Yeah because using a bunch of prewritten programs and a livecd made by someone else makes you a total 1337 h4x0r, right?

No, it just means that you're not a complete idiot, and you're aware of the basic steps that you should take if you don't want to be tracked down.

Re:a recipe

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone tell me what Window$ loving moron modded this troll. It may be snide, but it's accurate.

Re:a recipe

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah because using a bunch of prewritten programs and a livecd made by someone else makes you a total 1337 h4x0r, right?

No, it just means that you're not a complete idiot, and you're aware of the basic steps that you should take if you don't want to be tracked down.

There is, however a distinct difference between a "criminal mastermind" and someone who's "not a complete idiot". The difference being the yawing gap between an expert and an adolescent approval junkie with little understanding of networking. Yeah - tor is cool (it's where Wikileaks got their first aid package), and it and privoxy run so well through your neighbours router - woz you planning on doing any emailing? maybe a little p2p as well? why not?

Ad hoc, I can think of four potential trails you've overlooked (and *cough* ad hoc *cough* makes five).

Re:a recipe

[Larryish]

Four potential trails?

Please share. :)

Re:a recipe

[clone52431]

Well, one of them surely would be that if they get the appropriate equipment and then wait until you connect they can triangulate on your signal and find your physical location.

Re:a recipe

[Larryish]

That is certainly a possibility.

Thank you for pointing it out. :)

Re:a recipe

[Anonymous Coward]

It was implied and you're a fucking troll. Have a nice day.

connecting != hacking

[Jeffm223]

Seriously, it's bad enough to see it in mainstream media.

Re:connecting != hacking

[east coast]

He's getting jail time for unauthorized access, he used software to overcome the security of the router. I would agree with the media that it is close enough to hacking. Now had he stumbled on his neighbors' (open) wifi while trying to connect to his own and gotten busted for child porn I would say the term hacking is a bit much.

Re:connecting != hacking

[Anonymous Coward]

This comment is private. Any attempt to view it using software to overcome the security of this webserver constitutes unauthorized access. Have fun in jail, hacker.

Re:connecting != hacking

[east coast]

Find me a judge who'd consider this content secure and you might have a case. Sucks to be ignorant, doesn't it?

Re:connecting != hacking

[Jeffm223]

You miss the point. A "hacker" may have written the software he used, but that doesn't make him a "hacker." It makes him a (mis)user of tools produced by his betters, like most common criminals. The distinction is important because it criminalizes by inference an otherwise lawful pastime. "Close enough", as they say, only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades :-).

Re:connecting != hacking

[AntariMysteec]

The fact is if a item is secured and you gain access without permission, it is considered illegal. If you have a storage shed and take the cheap way out and use a $1.00 lock and someone cuts it off with a toe nail clipper is that breaking and entering or not considered because they didn't buy a $20 lock that was unbreakable? Can you honestly say that because a mechanism is easily circumvented that it's legal to do so? The point that Barry had to use a piece of software to circumvent the (weak) security on the wireless device is enough to consider it hacking. This would have been a completely different case if the wireless was open.

Re:connecting != hacking

[AntariMysteec]

You might want to look up the official definition of "hacker"... www.webster.com

My guess

[shoehornjob]

Is that this fool will be sucking some sausage sammich in prison before long. His lawyer may be able to plead out the pedo rap (honestly I just downloaded it from the internet so I could make my neighbor look bad)but I don't think they will ignore this in jail. Sucks to be him but that's what happens when you let your malice get the best of you.

Re:My guess

[MightyMartian]

I imagine it's too late to try to plead down the child porn charges. He apparently already had his chance, and could have avoided prison entirely, but the guy, for all the claims of being technically-savvy, seems pretty awe-inspiringly dumb. I see no evidence that the prosecutor offered a new plea bargain, though maybe the judge will look somewhat more kindly on this incredibly nasty guy for having spared the court any further trouble. He'll see jail time, and of a significant variety, and will probably end up on a sex offender registry to boot.

Re:My guess

[c0lo]

Sucks to be him but that's what happens when you let your malice get the best of you.

Agrravating circumstances... when what's the best of you isn't even remotely good enough.

plausible deniability via TOR

[SethJohnson]

Install TOR on your computer. Then you can have all kinds of random illegal traffic going through your net connection and blame (most of) it on strangers.

Seth

Re:plausible deniability via TOR

[random_ID]

Chances are your ISP would just cut you off after receiving enough complaints/DMCA notices (for stuff you didn't do). Good luck trying to get them to relent. Their TOS probably have some kind of 'at will' clause that says "we can terminate your service at any time for any reason". Deniability *might* protect you in court, but it won't convince an ISP to provide you with service.

Re:Tea Party strikes again!

[afxgrin]

I think it was pretty obvious when he was supposedly sending death threats to the vice-president's office using his full name...

or when his co-workers asked him "uh - why did you write that email to me last night?".

The case went to trial - and he folded.

[westlake]

Don't be so quick. Many innocent people plead guilty because they've been poorly advised by a public defender. A plea of guilty doesn't mean the person was guilty. It means that a deal was offered and the suspect had no faith in his defense at trial.

Where does it say he had a public defender?

He'd refused a more favorable plea deal last summer, insisting on fighting the government's case against him. But after two days of trial -- including Thursday's testimony from expert witnesses who showed the elaborate means Ardolf used to harass and smear neighbors who'd once called the police on him -- he stopped denying what he had done.
"The reality of it became apparent to him that this was going to happen and he didn't want to perpetuate his own distress or the pain for the victims," Ardolf's lawyer, Seamus Mahoney, said Friday. Vengeful neighbor in Blaine pleads to Biden threat, hacking

Seamus Mahoney is a criminal defense attorney with a state-wide practice in Minnnesota.

Re:The case went to trial - and he folded.

[Hatta]

It doesn't. I'm just pointing out that there are other reasons to plead guilty than actually being guilty. Not sure whether they apply to this case.

Re:The case went to trial - and he folded.

[Anonymous Coward]

He had a plea agreement back in June that he rejected... When he changed his plea last friday he accepted all counts straight up with no reductions. Believe me, we had more than enough to convict him and I think by seeing the mounds of evidence we had against him that he decided to change his plea and forgo the pain of listening to everyone's testimony.

Department of Rhomeland Security raises a Level!

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear the Beaurough of Non-violent Boy And Adult Child Porn (herein-after NBAACP) has raised the Domestic Terrorism level to 6 and in contrast to non-Domestic Terrorism this brings the color to PLAID! Hide your doubters!

proposed solution

[Flector]

take me

Did I?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ardolf, as in Ardolf Mittler? Oh, crap, I hope I didn't just Dodwin the thread...

Neat!

[ChristopherKriens]

Currently living in this town, nice to see some publicity on Slashdot. Come visit we have water slides (Summer only)

Re:Neat!

[Anonymous Coward]

Blaine is a vast exapnse of tract homes broken up by the ocassional soccer field. It's main imports are minivans and anything Sam's Club.
    Try typing 'I want to go to Blaine' in Google and you'll get 'Did you mean Bloomington?'

I don't understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

...why this is a "good reason to make sure your wireless is secure". The sentence just hangs there at the start or the article bearing no relation to the rest of it. Are you saying that I should go to all the hassle involved in securing my wifi just so that my neighbour can't got to prison? I suppose that's very social minded.

changed the word

[mapkinase]

I know you are joking, but you are only half-joking.

Seriously, is /. a high school male locker room where everybody is obligated to use profanities, or abbreviations of them?

Neighbor

[Sanat]

My neighbor on one side of me has an open WIFI connection (apparently) as the grandson of my other neighbor walks into my backyard to pickup the signal with his iPOD. Last night he was sitting in a plastic chair in the middle of my yard in six inches of snow and freezing cold out so he can acquire a connection and do whatever it is he is downloading/reading for hours at a time.

I have decided to stay out of the situation as my neighbor has the right to have a non-password protected access point if he desires... however the interesting thing is he works as a guard in a prison system so depending what the teenager is downloading could create havoc for him if an investigation is ever performed.

Re:Neighbor

[Spazztastic]

Be a good Samaritan and explain to him what the consequences are for not having locked down WIFI. I've secured friends networks for free (60 minute jobs) and not always been paid, but I usually get referrals to other people to do paid jobs or I get goodies (baked goods, beer, etc.) in return.

Peculiar Skew in Law

[Bob9113]

Ardolf faces a potential maximum penalty of 20 years in prison on the distribution of child pornography charge, ten years on the possession of child pornography charge, five years on both the unauthorized access to a computer and the threats to the Vice President charges, and a mandatory two-year minimum prison sentence on each count of aggravated identity theft.

Ardolf, they told police, had picked up their 4-year-old son and kissed him.

So let me see if I get this straight. The max penalty for child porn possession is 10 years, and picking up a 4 year old and kissing him (presumably without the parent's consent) isn't even in the charges? Given that child porn has been extended to include images of adults who are portrayed as children and that he had inappropriate contact with a real child, that seems out of whack to me. Distribution of child porn is easier for me to understand being in the same ball park as inappropriate contact, but possession? And not even including inappropriate contact in the charges?

Maybe there is a good reason in this specific case that the articles don't cover, but this seems like a solid red flag to analyze the laws and make sure they are coded properly. This sounds like a pretty serious bug to me.

Re:Peculiar Skew in Law

[AntariMysteec]

The problem with trying to go for that was a "he says, they said" argument. You have one person making the claim with the other denying it and no one else was a witness. How is that proven?

Better article

[morgauxo]

The one linked to at the end of the article http://www.startribune.com/local/north/112080854.html?elr=KArks:DCiUHc3E7_V_nDaycUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUoD3aPc:_2yc:a_ncyD_MDCiU Is much better then the one linked to here.

Re:Tea Party strikes again!

[Ash Vince]

Addendum: How much legal headache did his neighbor go through before Ardolf was suspected? The article doesn't say

There is a better article here that has a few more details:
http://www.startribune.com/local/north/112080854.html?elr=KArks:DCiUHc3E7_V_nDaycUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUoD3aPc:_2yc:a_ncyD_MDCiU

He did apparently get a visit from the secret service regarding the death threats.

Uh, that doesn't quite follow

[Anonymous Coward]

Another good reason to make sure your wireless is secured!

Well since the neighbors connection WAS "secure", it didn't help him out too much, did it?
This actually shows that even if someone dicks around on your connection, they're going to land in the slammer, and not you. Sadly, I came with a big bag of mod points for someone who was going to point that out, but I'm leaving disappointed in slashdot.

The idiot left a trail leading straight to him.

[RedHelix]

Unless you have the foresight to use a spoofer or - even better - use a throw-away USB wi-fi dongle, your MAC address will show up in the router's DHCP client log until the lease expires. Boom, headshot.

Re:The idiot left a trail leading straight to him.

[CastrTroy]

Or you could just change your MAC address in software before using your neighbour's wireless internet. Why do some many people think a MAC address is some magical thing you can't change?

Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish it were something a little less embarrassing the first time my city has been mentioned on /.

Well, his conscience finally

[Itesh]

kicked in and he [sunglasses]...just couldn't hack it.

Re:Tea Party strikes again!

[Anonymous Coward]

They had the earlier police call where they complained about him kissing their 4 year old son.

Re:Tea Party strikes again!

[buckminster_futt]

>> Likely all his computer equipment confiscated for evidence

>> Until all the paper work is done, the 'I's dotted and the
>> 'T's crossed, he will be without his computer gear,
>> since it would be evidence in the case still.

His hardware could be in the hands of the local Gestapo for a lot longer time. That is what happened to a brand new high end PC that I let my girlfriend borrowed so she could edit a batch of videos for her website.

She was at home doing exactly that when two uniforms and a probation officer just walked into her living room. Seems her new housemate neglected to tell her he was felon on parole. She tells the officers the parolee is not there., so the cops start looking around to see if he is hiding somewhere.

When they don't find him, they start searching for contraband. They start with the parole's bedroom but they don't stop there. They pull every drawer out and dunp the contents in a big pile on the floor. After they finish trashing my girlfriends entire apt, the cops act pissed off because they didn't find anything. Of course they don't wanna go back to the cop shop empty handed.

Without even warning her, they just unplug the PC, and take it with them. while ignoring my girlfriend who tells them that the computer is not the property of the damn parolee. There were TV's, VCR's and her stereo sitting next to the computer. Why didn't these junior storm troopers show any interest in that hardware.

Did they take it because of the content my girlfriend was editing when they arrived? Their was nothing illeagal on that new computer but they sure wanted to take the PC back to their office. Did they wanna show their fellow officers the video clips of this beautiful naked redhead.

There was no warrant allowing them to seize my property and they ignored the DOJ rules that require computers be treated like a printing press because of the Bill of Rights

And now that beautiful redhead is now really pissed off. She calls me after she spoke with her lawyer. He told her to get the store receipts for the PC and a letter sighed by me. then goes downtown with the paperwork to prove ownership but the cops refuse to release the PC claiming it was evidence needed for the parole hearing.

A couple of weeks go by, at the parole hearing is over her housemate is sent back to prison so there no reason to keep the PC. The police just give her the runaround and won't even tell her why they won't release my damn PC. She tries several more times and finally a detective tells her that the PC is being held pending "forensic examination".

Tired of this bullshit My girlfriend and her lawyer go down to the courthouse, file a motion to fore the county release the fuckin computer. Eventually a judge issues a court order telling the cops they must release my computer. When my girlfriend takes the order signed by the judge to get the computer, the cops claim that they can't find the damn thing.

WTF is going on here? I tell my girlfriend to forget the computer, its not worth spending more money to sue the county for a few thousand bucks. Several months later, a letter from the county comes threatening to sell my god damn computer!! My girlfriend goes to the county auction facility and finally she comes back with that damn computer.

What had once been a new high end computer with only a few hours on it won't even boot now, Those lousy thieves replaced my 10,000 RPM hard drive with the fast and wide SCSI interface with some dinky el cheapo hard drive and then didn't even bother to installing Windows on it. the Matrox video capture card I paid a lot of money for is also gone along with all the extra RAM I had bought.

Those stupid fuckers acted like more like bunch of gangsters wearing badges instead of cops. The police ignored the our rights, violated federal law and the special DOJ rules related to computer seizures. Maybe the mishandling of my computer, refusing to return the machine and then "loosing" the PC, w

The Root Cause: Neighbor's Dog

[Anonymous Coward]

All this just because his neighbor's dog wouldn't stop barking ? J/K

I know; I was there...

[AntariMysteec]

I just got forwarded this link by an associate of mine. I was surprised to find out this made slashdot... I was the "private investigator" that was hired to originally absolve the neighbor from sending the original emails which included the child porn to the lawfirm's partners. After seeing the pattern I thought I had a good chance to catch the hacker and the firm retained my services to go after him. The reasoning was that if we were to lock things down (remove the wireless and hardwire) that the person trying to get at the neighbor would find other avenues to get at him. We had a very reasonable honey pot that could produce honey sitting in front of us. I'm independent not working for any one other than my own company/myself or subcontracted for numerous firms around. I used a combination of wireshark and a few self custom written utilities to go after this guy. And no, these utilities are mine and are not for sale; sorry. I'm an engineer/analyst, security specialist, and developer with about 24 years of paid professional experience which really helps when you need to understand something then write a utility to provide it. His wireless was installed by qwest and used WEP as the base configuration (GASP). Whether or not this encryption should have been used or not, the sheer nature that there was some form of encryption did matter in the end. It is easy to hack WEP (and not too hard for WPA/WPA2 either...) but it is illegal to do so. This is one of the six charges he was charged with. From what I understand, if there was no encryption then it would have been a completely different case... It took months of watching the traffic, sifting through gigabytes of PCAP logs, to find what I was looking for. Once I found the smoking gun it was provided back to the FBI that validated what I found then issued a search warrant to go after the guy. The fact was that a MAC address was impossible to use so the firewall log only showed that rogue connections were being made. A single IP address was also impossible to use since that IP address was being assigned by the neighbor's DHCP server (dsl router). The FBI and Secret Service was not involved with the initial technical search nor could they be due to federal laws. Barry was a "certified ethical hacker" (CEH) which means that he knew the process and has been trained to run the proper utilities to hack. Not that this is mandatory, any kiddie can search on youtube to find out how to do this and just how easy it is. But he at least understood the concept of IP addressing. It turns out that he understood MAC addresses as well since he was changing his computer's NIC's MAC address on a regular basis. I don't know exactly what was found on Barry's computers once the FBI took over or how much (if any) additional child porn was pulled. I do know he found the previous neighbors (from another city) SSNs, their tax returns, and also copies of the current threatening letters on his computers. The other neighbor's around Barry's house were also broken into which made the argument of using a YAGI antennae an almost impossible feat due to the physical locations of the houses. All I know is that this guy had some serious issues and became "bitter" at the world that seemed to have started when his wife suddenly died about 10 years ago. There was a LOT to this case and it wasn't a simple slam dunk. We had a mountain of evidence that was racked up over a period of time. Each piece was necessary to prove/disprove methods and ownership. The worst part was getting the information in a form that the jury would understand. I firmly believe that our federal prosecutor had a good understanding (and took the time to understand) the technology behind it and created a very easily understood case without losing the intrigrity of the technology. Point is, no matter how good you think you are; there is always someone better (and the same goes for me as well). Stay white; its just not worth it.... This guy is looking at a possible 44 years in fed. Barry was offered a plea of 2 y