Wi-Fi Piggybacking Widespread

BaCa sent in this article about stealing network access that opens, "Sophos has revealed new research into the use of other people's Wi-Fi networks to piggyback onto the internet without payment. The research shows that 54 percent of computer users have admitted breaking the law, by using someone else's wireless internet access without permission." Of course, online polls being what they are, the results are hardly a plank for a full investigation, but a good share of the answerers did 'fess up to it as well.

54 percent??!?

[thermopile]

Oh, come on .. I can't believe it's not more like 90 or 95 percent. In fact, I'm typing this while "borrowing" my neighbor's linksys network. The admi-- $$%110113944 NO CARRIER

MP3s are a gateway item

[Anonymous Coward]

You start by just stealing that one song. Then another, then another. Pretty soon your stealing movies, games, operating systems. Now you move up to what's known as speedballing - stealing songs using someone elses wifi. You try to hide your addiction by using proxies, but you can't hide from your own thoughts. Sooner or later, you'll be stealing large chunks of the internet. And one day - one day - you'll be found dead in alley clutching your hacked iPhone and box of sim chips. The police probably won't even investigate your death.

Re:54 percent??!?

[RuBLed]

You mean like her? Mrs. Roberts [xkcd.com]

To the tune of "Alice's Restaurant"...

[MostAwesomeDude]

You can have anything you wish, on "linksys" wireless.
You can have anything you wish, on "linksys" wireless.
Associate, it's on channel six;
Fire up your browser and grab some bits.
An' you can have anything you wish, on "linksys" wireless,
On "linksys" wireless!

Re:Encryption

[jamesh]

I was helping out someone over the phone at a client's remote office. He'd just come back from overseas and could connect to the wireless network and access the internet but couldn't connect to any of the internal systems. After checking all the obvious things I established a remote control session to his laptop and started looking around. The IP address of the wireless interface was nothing like what it should have been. I then connected to the Access point he was using and found that it was set up nothing like it should have been and DHCP was enabled. Aha! I thought. The Access point has been reset to factory defaults. I threw a new config at it and rebooted it, but things still weren't working right.

Eventually, I figured out that while he was away, someone in a neighboring office must have set up an access point with the same SSID (NETGEAR - so the chances of it happening were pretty high!) and his laptop decided to connect to that instead. And i'd just reconfigured it with a fairly high level of security. Oops.

Oh well... maybe next time their neighbor will put security on their access point!

Re:I agree its wrong

[SmurfButcher Bob]

I'm waiting for an access point to recruit my laptop... so I can sue the balls off of its owner for "illegally accessing" MY local network (127.0.0.1).

Wifi Sharing

[photomonkey]

In 2004, I was covering the Presidential debate and Kerry rally following it in Phoenix.

The press facilities at the debate were adequate, but sucked nine kinds of ass at the Kerry rally.

As per company policy, I FTP'd my photos in following the event only to find out that most of them were received as corrupted.

So I drove around with my laptop on the passenger seat looking for an open wireless point. I drove past a house with every light on, and an open access point. Since the light was on, I decided to ring the doorbell to let the homeowner know who was camped out in front of their driveway with a laptop.

The guy came to the door and said the wireless was 'obviously' open for all to use, since he didn't lock it down. He told me I was welcome to come in and sit in the house while I worked, provided that he and his wife could look over my shoulder at the pictures.

I accidently reconfigured my neighbor's router

[MichaelCrawford]

My landlady said I could use her wireless (she lived upstairs from me) but both she and a neighbor, who I never identified, had unsecured wireless, with both networks being named "linksys". They also used two different ISPs.

My MacBook Pro's Airport card connected to each network more or less at random. When I connected to her's, it worked OK, but when I connected to her neighbor's, it didn't work at all. Sometimes the Airport would switch networks in the middle of my use of the Internet, which really got to be a drag.

So I finally convinced her to let me rename and secure her access point. This went very well, and I was able to set up both my Mac and her WinXP laptop to use the newly secured net.

Except that I made a crucial mistake: I performed the re-configuration wirelessly. I didn't do it by plugging an ethernet cable into her access point.

Imagine my dismay when I realized I had reconfigured her neighbor's access point, and not her's!

I sat in my room quaking with fear, awaiting the heavy bootheels of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police kicking down my door so they could haul me in for being a cyberterrorist.

I never heard any complaints though, and eventually my neighbor's network was renamed to "linksys" and was again unsecured. My guess is that LinkSys tech support explained how to do a hard reset.

My question for my Slashdot friends is this: who is the Rocket Scientist at LinkSys who decided to support wireless reconfiguration of their routers?

Re:I agree its wrong

[dwater]

and I like to have mine open and free too so my neighbours can access it if they so like.

I named my access point the same as my phone number just so people would now who to call if there was a problem. One woman called me to angrily ask me why my phone number was on her desktop - in a very accusing kind of way, like I'd been {cr,h}acking her system or something.

So, you're saying I could then have had her arrested for stealing my bandwidth? Rediculous.

Re:I agree its wrong

[kimvette]

No. Broadcasting the SSID and requiring no authentication is akin to putting a bicycle out in your front yard with a sign saying "FREE BICYCLE, COME TAKE IT."

Some of it is just plain ignorance

[Anonymous Coward]

Couple of years ago, I got a call from a client. Seems his wireless wasn't working anymore. So I packs up my kit and run right over there.

"Where's the access point?"
"What's an access point?"

... many explanations later ...

"No, no, no! You don't know what you are talking about. I just ordered a Dell with a wireless card and it connected right up! But it doesn't work anymore. Get it back!"

A quick look showed 3 SSID's, but, lo and behold, they were all encrypted. I can only assume that the neighbors noticed extra traffic/connections and closed them down. When I left he was yelling about getting someone who really knew about computers to come and fix the problem.

Re:I agree its wrong

[eharvill]

Yeah...however, the car HAS a parking brake, but by default it not engaged.

But the car comes with an owners manual with instructions of how and when to use the parking brake properly. The last Windows user guide I saw was from 3.1 I believe.

Re:I agree its wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Or here's a better idea. If I want to let anyone use my Access Point, I tell the Access Point to allow anyone to connect. If I don't want that, I tell the Access Point to ask for some sort of authentication before granting access. Why rely on people interpretting what my SSID means, when the protocol provides a way to grant/deny access explicitly.