Man Arrested for Stealing Wi-Fi Access...Among Other Things

DexterDexter Vancouver, BC Canada
edited July 2004 in Science & Tech
Toronto police laid a theft of communications charge after busting a man driving the wrong way down a one-way street, downloading child porn using stolen wireless Internet signals. The slow moving car was pulled over around 5 a.m. on Wednesday by a police officer who allegedly found the pantsless driver watching a movie of a 10-year-old girl performing fellatio on an adult on his laptop. Police allege the man downloaded the movie using an Internet connection he intercepted from a nearby house.
Stealing Internet is becoming more common among perverts trying to avoid online detection. It's also a way they invade someone else's computer which could have serious ramifications for unsuspecting wireless Internet subscribers, police say.
Source: Canoe.ca

Comments

  • GHoosdumGHoosdum Icrontian
    edited July 2004
    Sick.
  • t1rhinot1rhino Toronto
    edited July 2004
    Yeah, it was all over the local news. What a sick man...
  • croc_croc_ New
    edited July 2004
    Dexter wrote:
    Toronto police laid a theft of communications charge after busting a man driving the wrong way down a one-way street, downloading child porn using stolen wireless Internet signals. The slow moving car was pulled over around 5 a.m. on Wednesday by a police officer who allegedly found the pantsless driver watching a movie of

    I couldn't help but laugh at this part. Besides the child porn part. Pantsless wrong way-wardriver.

    People really need to learn how to encrypt their wireless networks. My friend at UCLA could access multiple networks at a time in his apt. complex if he chose to do so, none of them encrypted and some with shared folders and devices.
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited July 2004
    Castration would be too good for that asshat! :mad: He needs a long time in a cell with "Bubba" to change his sexual preferences. :D
  • qparadoxqparadox Vancouver, BC
    edited July 2004
    WEP, MAC authentication and many of the current wireless encryption protocals are easily worked around or easily broken. Using current methods only means it takes a few more minutes for someone to be able to steal access. Its not a major deterrant.
  • BlackHawkBlackHawk Bible music connoisseur There's no place like 127.0.0.1 Icrontian
    edited July 2004
    :wtf:
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited July 2004
    WEP != broken in a few minutes. It takes over 14 hours.
  • GobblesGobbles Ventura California
    edited July 2004
    Thrax is that for 64 128 or 256 bit...?

    Gobbles
  • croc_croc_ New
    edited July 2004
    I think any sort of deterrance would be enough, even the lowest level of encryption. Most of these people are just using network scanners to find the networks, if its encrypted ... they move on to a new network that isn't. I don't think this guy driving naked down an alley is going to stop and wait for a program to decrypt the security on a network, when he can keep driving and find a new one in a few minutes. Just my opinion. Even if it doesn't stop them, at least its makign it harder for them to access it.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited July 2004
    12-14 hours for 64 bit, and increasing quite sharply with each additional doubling of WEP bits.

    Furthermore, WPA (WEP's successor) is almost impossible to break, because it's a 128/256 bit WEP key that the USER chooses cycling every minute or so. It's a technical impossibility at this time to:

    A) Break the current key and inject a payload in under a minute

    or

    B) Find a pattern and tap into it. Because the user picks the first key, people can't use known WPA patterns.
  • CammanCamman NEW! England Icrontian
    edited July 2004
    Even if WEP is "easily broken", simply turning it on and using it really <i>is</i> a major deterent, a lot of these people wouldnt have the know-how to break it and simply know how to click "connect" when XP shows a wireless signal available, to say the least, I doubt someone driving around, without pants, trying to download childporn is going to spend the time to break the encryption, no, he'll just look for an unsecured wireless access point, which are really abundant right now.

    Even with "weak" technologies like WEP, if people just turned it on wireless would be A LOT more secure. I went out with netstumbler around my town and a laptop just for fun (picking up SSID beacons doesnt break any laws! even tho this teacher tried to tell me I was doing something illegal..) and I found 250+ APs and I think maybe 12 of them were using WEP and most of them using it were pay access points in some coffee shops around town that charge visitors a fee to get the access code to get on their wireless node. If everyone with wireless APs in their homes just used WEP which is so simple to set up and disabled their SSID beacons after initial setup then their networks would be so much more secure, but, people are lazy and they just toss it out of the box and go.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited July 2004
    Righto.

    Everyone goes to Best Buy, purchases a WAP, comes home, plugs it in, and never pays attention to it again.

    They don't enable WEP, disable SSID beacon, change key indexes.. Nothing.

    The wireless insecurity issue is born right out of the fact that people are, for the most part, electronically retarded.
  • BlackHawkBlackHawk Bible music connoisseur There's no place like 127.0.0.1 Icrontian
    edited July 2004
    Why can't they come enabled by default?
  • CammanCamman NEW! England Icrontian
    edited July 2004
    Black Hawk wrote:
    Why can't they come enabled by default?

    because the WEP keys on the access point has to match the cards and the user makes up the key string to use, and if it came enabled with a default key, people could easily found out what it was
  • SlackerSlacker CA, USA
    edited July 2004
    Thrax wrote:
    WEP != broken in a few minutes. It takes over 14 hours.

    Just curious, how long does it take to 'break' into a wireless network that's only using MAC filtering?
  • GHoosdumGHoosdum Icrontian
    edited July 2004
    As long as it takes to determine the MAC address of a device on the network (depends on user's skill I suppose), and install a piece of software that does MAC spoofing on your PC.
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited July 2004
    Google is your friend :rolleyes:
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited July 2004
    Who's googling?
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