WIFI theft

Look out your window and see people sat there with laptops, hardly rocket science that they are likely to be using the wifi connection of someone near to you, if not your own. It is illegal after all and if there was a patrol nearby (one drives up and down my road every now and again, for example) then it wouldn't be very long before someone showed up.

Proving they were using your wireless though, that would be a bit more tricky. I wonder how they would prove it without a confession.
 
Thats like saying that if you left your car unlocked its partly your fault your stereo got stolen. Just because its easier doesn't make it less legal...

Plus we have no idea if it was encrypted or not. WEP can be broken in less than 3 minutes, WPA is also crackable but it takes longer.
 
DRZ said:
Look out your window and see people sat there with laptops, hardly rocket science that they are likely to be using the wifi connection of someone near to you
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There seems to be too many coincidents

1 - someone saw them on a laptop and thought "oh noes!"
2 - called the police, how did they think it was their connection being used?
3 - police took action on this issue.

Just think it is an over reaction if it is true.
 
DRZ said:
Thats like saying that if you left your car unlocked its partly your fault your stereo got stolen. Just because its easier doesn't make it less legal...
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But it is. I'm not saying it's not illegal of course it is but if that happens to me I'd be blaming myself just as much since locking the car up would have very probably prevented the theft in the first place..

Didn't realise the WEP and WPA can be cracked so easily though.
 
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Rhys said:
There seems to be too many coincidents

1 - someone saw them on a laptop and thought "oh noes!"
2 - called the police, how did they think it was their connection being used?
3 - police took action on this issue.

Just think it is an over reaction if it is true.
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How on earth else do you think this could have happened? :confused:

Apply Occam's Razor and you will see that its probably what happened.

WiFi theft is in the public eye at the moment and its probably the kind of thing the Police will jump on to increase their profile for stuff like this.
 
I haven't bothered with WEP and WPA cause thankfully no-one in my area knows how to steal wifi internet! But i have just assigned the wireless to the MAC addresses of the laptop, Wii and PS3 and kept it only to those and addon any MAC addresses for wireless products that i may buy.
 
tolien said:
MAC address filtering is pointless without encryption - it's easy to sniff a MAC address that's allowed and spoof that.
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It can be cracked easily though, its just a case of how strong the passphrase is as to HOW difficult it is. Rainbow tables can be generated for any set and yeah, its not as fast as a dictionary attack but its hardly rocket science to break it. Its just more difficult than WEP.

I agree with you about MAC filtering though, so insecure you might as well not bother at all.
 
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