Strange neighborhood occurrence

More on this

http://www.pcworld.com/article/121747/man_arrested_for_accessing_wifi_network.html

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,276720,00.html

 

Read this: http://news.cnet.com/FAQ-Wi-Fi-mooching-and-the-law/2100-7351_3-5778822.html
Cnet basicly says up to the judge. Not clear yet

 

Thanks for the information guys. I'll look into it some more. I won't let someone get off the hook that easily.

 

Don't take chances, always change your password if you've got wifi. I lived in a pretty urban, built up area for a while, lots of apartments and duplex's and I was stupid and left my wifi unsecured. One day I'm sitting at my computer and notice my flippin hard drive is almost full, I start checking things and somebody had somehow put a semi-hidden folder into my computer and was using it to store porn - thousands of pictures and a lot of videos. Needless to say my wife was PISSED and I felt a little violated, if they could put stuff on my computer without me knowing they definitely were able to take stuff off it. After finding all that I went and switched all my bank accounts and changed every one of my sign on names and passwords. Probably just a stupid ass kid who didn't want his parents to find his stash, but can't take chances.

 

I just saw that episode the other day. Definitely a possibility... or they could have been downloading music off somebody else's wifi just so they don't get caught on their own.

 

Personally I wouldn't put much trust in free wifi anyway...Google "evil twin wireless". Bottom line always lock your network. If someone uses your network to do shady things you can still be held libel for it even if you were unaware.

 

Definitely lock down your wireless. I think WPA2 is the most current encryption method at the moment, but you could take it a step further and only allow certain MAC addresses (yes I know people could do a MAC spoof). But I figure if you take enough precautions on your wifi people won't bother. They'll just move over to the next house that doesn't know any better.

 

If someone is going to hack your network and be able to spoof your MAC address, you're doomed. No home router will stop them. MAC authentication will be the best and isn't bad for your house. Our sister company in Canada adds all computers in the company by MAC. It's a pain for a company LOL.

 

This. I use a combination of hardware firewall and MAC authentication on my home network. If someone wants to drive by and put the effort into bypassing all of that, only to figure out that the only thing valuable on my servers is a running image of my operating systems and a music/video library, then so be it.

But if they have the capabilities to MAC spoof and bypass hardware firewalls over wifi signals, you aren't going to stop them with your basic home equipment.

It's a pain in the ass to do a MAC allow list, but as far as safety with neighbors/randos its your best bet. Once you get the majority of your computers/phones/laptops/friends phones/laptops etc etc etc on it, you don't really have to worry about it much.



On a related note to the OP, I'd at least tell your neighbors, if nothing else it may incur a change in the wireless security.

I wouldn't be too threatened by some young kids trying to jack some free wifi, but you never know. At that age I thought it was awesome to be a script kiddie and run precompiled stuff to find encrypted keys and what not. It was mostly harmless, and there's no real immediate threat in the home, as long as you don't stumble upon someone who keeps extra sensitive material on a non secured network (which seems stupid to me anyway). Assuming they could even get to pertinent information like a bank statement with a routing number/account number, I'd highly doubt that a 15 or 16 year old kid would even know where to start thinking about how to steal money or fraud someones ID. Credit cards could be a different story with how easy it is to order online, but even still, you'd need a lot of advanced knowledge to get information like that.

Just my .02$

 

Who knows what they were doing................pretty bold to sit out on a curb in broad daylight and try to hack into someone's system, but then again most criminals are just plain stupid!