Man charged with stealing Wi-Fi signal
Spinner
Birmingham, UK
Police have arrested a man for using someone else's wireless Internet network in one of the first criminal cases involving this fairly common practice.
Benjamin Smith III, 41, faces a pretrial hearing this month following his April arrest on charges of unauthorized access to a computer network, a third-degree felony.
Benjamin Smith III, 41, faces a pretrial hearing this month following his April arrest on charges of unauthorized access to a computer network, a third-degree felony.
Source: CNNInnocuous use of other people's unsecured Wi-Fi networks is common. But experts say that illegal use often goes undetected, such as people sneaking on others' networks to traffic in child pornography, steal credit card information and send death threats.
Security experts say people can prevent such access by turning on encryption or requiring passwords, but few bother or even know how to do so.
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One time I was sitting in my car waiting on my daughter to finish dance class. I was doing homework and realized I needed a file from my work PC. I turned on my wireless just to see what was out there and found a network wide open. I was curious and connected to the network called "LINKSYS". I double checked and the router had the default password too... I took a look at the network and saw a PC called "Server". The server was sharing a drive... the admin account had a blank password. So... what did I do... Left a text file on the desktop. It read that the owner needs to secure its wireless network and its server too.... I left my name and number in case he needed assistance. That's it...
The second case... I was fixing a customers PC and needed a NIC driver... so I used my laptop to connect to a unsecured network, downloaded the driver and fixed the customer's PC.
A felony? I really hope not....
Never ever ever ever do what you did in the first case again. Not unless you wanna see a jail cell from the inside. Just because someone is a technical moron doesnt mean your not gonna be in the sling if they open that test and say "OMG I've been hacked! Here police/FBI...here's a phone # the person left!". Next thing you know your bringing bubba flowers in prison Mitnick style, all cause you wanted to make someone safe.
If that had been a wireless router for a business, then you can get charged by the FBI for all grades of things including information theft and others.
I'm willing to stick up for myself in court for what I think is right. People need to know that unsecured servers and wireless networks are unsafe and can cause very big problems. A server that is compromised can be setup to spam, deliver viruses, DOS attacks... I had no idea who the server belonged to so I could just knock on there door and let them know either.
Where I work (Federal Government), our Security Admins "hack" into unsecured systems onsite in order to show the owners that they are vulnerable. By leaving my name and number, I showed that I'm not afraid to get a phone call and justify my "hacking" into their system. I'd like see them secure the server and network. In the end, I went back several weeks later and the network was gone (or not broadcasting the SSID) so they either took it offline or secured it. Either way, my job is done.
Am I opening myself to possible scrutiny, probably. Thanks for the concern though.
This is the dumbest issue since the pet rock. What kind of crap is going down. The next thing that you know they are gonna' start making up stupid laws about computer access. Half of the people out there making these laws are probably too stupid to even figure out that this
If you knew that this guy was wanking to child pornography while using an unsecured network, would that change your opinion of the story?
Shame on CNN (as usual) for reporting only sensational bits and throwing in unsubstantiated bits that fire up the imagination, and not making any serious effort to get to the actual news. But shame on anybody who thinks that a crime wasn't committed here. If I found some ******* stealing my internet that I pay for, I would want to prosecute him too.
Sure, stealing someone's internet is a crime, but it should be a misdemenor resulting in a fine if it was just somebody's Linksys router in their livingroom. If someone steals a signifigant amount of bandwidth from a business that has a lot of (expensive) bandwidth to steal, the thief should be held liable for any harm that came to the business because of that (perhaps a failure of business task that depended on available bandwidth), and for the cost of that bandwidth. Plus punitive damages.
Again, if someone is using it to download kiddie porn, that doesn't make stealing the internet access a felony. It means they are guilty of a separate charge - possessing or distributing kiddie porn.
If he wasn't doing anything malicious, and you (or the "victim") wasn't taking steps to secure the network in the correct manner in the first place, then how is that a punishable crime?
What about some Macs that automatically log in to an unsecured WIFI network as soon as one is available? Are you saying we should "get" all the Mac owners too?
If you're too stupid to take responsibility and properly secure your network/PC from even an accidental log in, you have no right to prosecute those who "break in" to your network.
If you lived in a glass house, would you prosecute everyone who walks by and sees you dressing yourself?
I actually went to the neighbour's place in order to tell him that his wireless network as well as his two personal PC's on the network were at risk and he just shrugged his shoulders. Perhaps if i change his router password and then print it off on his own printer in big bold letters along with some of the personal info from his numerous word docs he'd be more inclined to listen.
People with wireless routers need to be a little more educated on what you can do to prevent this. You can do this by several ways. For one you can disable your SSIB broadcast or i think which is the most effective if you don't want to enable WEP, is to filter the system's on your home network by way of mac address.
If I left my door unlocked and someone walked in and took things from my house, a crime is committed.
That isn't an analogous example. If someone walked into your unlocked house and used your phone, but took nothing nor damaged nothing, that would be a similar real world example.
It most definitely is a crime, but a felony? That makes no sense.
But you are giving a physical crime... By transmitting your network that is unsecured, you're not just leaving your doors unlocked, but wide open, and posting a sign in the yard that reads, "Estate sale, everything must go... take what you can carry."
If someone had to really "break-in", use brute force techniques, or physically walked into your house to "steal" network traffic, then yes... Bust the guy.
It would be like a radio-station pressing charges for listening to their station when the "Meant to transmit to just a few houses..." If the radio station was a police radio that was encrypted and the guy had to crack the encryption then transmitted on the police band, that’s criminal…
Now what the guy does with the network connection, which should be the real issue.
According to the police, a crime was definitely committed.
Right, but you're not broadcasting your house over your entire neighborhood, making any passerby liable to accidentally "step into your door".
As someone who is in the security field, just giving you fair warning.