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Join Date: Apr 2005
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Passing by
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: London, Europe
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Most ISP user licences prohibit it (apart from Speakeasy and one or two small local ISPs) though difficult for them to police.
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I shot the sherrif.
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Funny thing they don't mention. People who leave their wireless open on purpose in order to steal the info of those leeching their access. You have NO idea if someone is running ethereal or the like on that wifi hub or not.
Google is your frenemy. Caveat Emptor - Latin for tough titty I tend to interpret things in the way that's most hilarious to me |
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Join Date: Apr 2005
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I don't live off my neighbor's WiFi but I have connected to them by accident. I just don't see how this can ever be policed for non-password-protected WiFi, especially in urban settings. Unless I'm missing something, it's impossible to tell the difference between a public hotpsot and Mrs. Smith's unsecured WiFi next door. Some public hotspots seem to have a welcome page, etc.; others do not. To me, if you're blasting non-password-protected WiFi into someone's apartment, seems hard to believe that person could get prosecuted for using it. |
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Passing by
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: London, Europe
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25 chars of wasted space.
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It's illegal to steal DirectTV, even if they are beaming that everywhere. Although maybe that is about faking their authorization.
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Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Chicago
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Huge difference IMHO.
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Senior Member
Join Date: Jun 2005
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I was trying to get my cousin's PC working on his wireless network and found that in his living room it defaulted to the neighbor's network because that signal was stronger than the one from my cousin's router. It would be hard to call that stealing.
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Veteran Member
Join Date: Jun 2004
Location: Portlandia
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"What a computer is to me is it's the most remarkable tool that we've ever come up with, and it's the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds." - Steve Jobs |
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Member
Join Date: May 2004
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I don't think you can really "steal" bandwidth. At least not in the literal sense. Yeah sure, when you leech off someone else's internet service that you aren't compenstating them for it makes it a theft, but really you are not actually physically taking anything away from them, or depriving them of anything. Unless you are using so much bandwidth it drops their speeds down, then I guess you would be taking something away from them.
I looked it up real fast and basically the definition of stealing is "The wrongful taking of someone else's property without that person's willful consent," but I don't really think that applies to bandwidth. The way I see it is that bandwidth is like clock cycles, if you don't use them they're gone forever. You can't save up bandwidth like you save up water, or money, or whatever. If it's not used it's gone and you can't get it back, so if you're not using your connection but someone else is, your are not out anything, and since most internet plans nowadays are for unlimited bandwidth (for the most part) it's not like you're getting charged for other people's usage. This was the original notion with SETI & Folding@Home and unused clock cycles. Although, I guess it's not a fair comparison since Standford isn't exactly walking into your house and installing F@H on your machine without your consent. So yeah, by definition of law it is a theft, but still it's something to think about. No awkward goodbyes. No 'still friends' bullshit. Just a couple of bruised titties and a failed relationship. I rule. |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2004
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If I have a 1.5Mb/sec pipe, and someone is using 1/2 of it, my max speed is 1/2 of what it should be.
I have lost half my bandwidth. That's theft, plain and simple. And yes, most of the time I'm running 80-90% of my bandwidth. Also, on many WiFi networks, they're 802.11b/g... defaulting to b is any *one* b unit gets on. Whammo, you just lost nearly 80% of your bandwidth internally to boot. (54Mb -> 11Mb). There's a reason my WAP is locked down tight. Last edited by Kickaha : 2005-08-10 at 19:17. |
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Join Date: May 2004
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Had to |
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Valiant Vicks Vizier
Join Date: Jan 2005
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Hm... after this thread I started to think about something that happened a few nights ago. I was on the internet but suddenly, the pages I tried to view were very slow to load. I never checked my settings to see if there was another wireless connection to our network, but my connection hadn't ever been so slow. Do ya'll think the reason it got so slow was because someone else was connected to our network. It's definitely not open to the public, we've got it passworded and everything.
Ya'll think someone was leeching or was it just a bad connection that night? |
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I shot the sherrif.
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I go out of my way to cracked locked WAP's.
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Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2004
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Bad connection, almost certainly.
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Selfish Heathen
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Zone of Pain
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While WEP is crackable, it still takes someone pretty knowledgeable to run the right kind of software (with the right kind of NIC) and patient to collect enough packets to perform a statistical analysis and actually break in. Of course, if you have a simple password, a dictionary attack would get in pretty quickly. Yes, WEP is insecure, but its vulnerability is blown way out of proportion. WEP is like a dead bolt on your front door. It's enough to keep out the passersby but not enough to keep out the determined attacker. If you're using WPA, though, you're pretty safe as there are no known major vulnerabilities. The quality of this board depends on the quality of the posts. The only way to guarantee thoughtful, informative discussion is to write thoughtful, informative posts. AppleNova is not a real-time chat forum. You have time to compose messages and edit them before and after posting. |
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Passing by
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: London, Europe
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If you are concerned that someone is leeching your bandwidth you can definitively lock down your wireless router so that only your Mac can access it. Each wireless device (including your Airport Extreme card) has a unique MAC (=Media Access Card) code which is practically impossible to spoof (unless of course you're the NSA).
If you use an Apple base station, go into AirPort Admin Utility and click on Access Control. Click on the plus at the right hand side and then on "This Computer" in the dialogue box. You will see a description (the name of your Mac) and AirPort ID (6, 2 digit hexidecimal numbers) - this is your MAC code and unique to you. Click OK and then update at the bottom right hand side of the pane. Your base station will now update its settings. From now on, no other wireless device except your Mac can access your base station as the router will only accept your MAC code. |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: Jun 2004
Location: Portlandia
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Just a nitpick. I'm pretty sure that in computer networking MAC stands for Media Access Control; as in media access control address (MAC address).
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Valiant Vicks Vizier
Join Date: Jan 2005
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Member
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Colorado
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Every network interface card, whether it be wired ethernet, 802.11whatever (including base stations of any kind), or dialup modem has a unique MAC address (I'm generalizing here, I know some router allow you to change the MAC). Also, a MAC can be spoofed thats one of the big reasons WEP is so vulnerable... WPA 1+2 encrypt the MAC as well as everything else in the data packet whereas WEP leaves the MAC wide open.
Most newer wireless AP's (I have an Asus 300g) or routers have the ability to use MAC filtering. The best way I know to really lock down a network is to use WPA2 plus an access control list (MAC filter). Oh, and a really good password including upper and lowercase letters plus numbers. Note: Most routers (even ones using the same chipset) from different brands have trouble using MAC filtering, WPA2, and WDS at the same time. It's due to the way different router software handle the MAC encryption so if you dont have an Airport base station and need WDS nine times out of ten WPA will NOT work. Last edited by gjas15 : 2005-08-11 at 03:54. |
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Passing by
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: London, Europe
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.Hack - Does Airport Admin utility work with your wireless router? If it doesn't ,use the app supplied to configure it; I'd have thought any decent wireless router would have the ability to restrict access to it in the same way though I've not used linksys , D-Link et al myself. |
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Selfish Heathen
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Zone of Pain
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Linksys routers are configurable from a local web interface such as http://192.168.1.1 where you can set up MAC filtering and such. I'm not sure about other brands.
The quality of this board depends on the quality of the posts. The only way to guarantee thoughtful, informative discussion is to write thoughtful, informative posts. AppleNova is not a real-time chat forum. You have time to compose messages and edit them before and after posting. |
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25 chars of wasted space.
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Similar things can be done with D-Link as well.
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Join Date: Apr 2005
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If a person's WiFi is password-protected and someone hacks into it to use the bandwidth, then I agree that's theft. But if the network is open and available to anyone with WiFi capability, I disagree. |
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Join Date: May 2004
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Once you collect enough packets it just runs a brute force against it anyways, so it doesn't matter what the password is, with enough CPU time, it will be broken. I recommend using a higher WEP encryption rate because that will require a higher number of IV packets to be collected and will take longer to brute force, so anyone trying it might just think they're doing it wrong and give up. Also, I was unsuccessful in cracking WEP with Apple's Airport Extreme, I'm not sure if they use a different algorithm or what, however it took me no time to get the 64-bit WEP from a Linux Wireless-G access point with a fair amount of traffic on the network.. No awkward goodbyes. No 'still friends' bullshit. Just a couple of bruised titties and a failed relationship. I rule. Last edited by Random Hero : 2005-08-11 at 22:28. Reason: creating == cracking |
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Selfish Heathen
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Zone of Pain
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Oh, I know it's not hard. I actually wrote my own program last semester for a security class to do it.
No attacker worth two cents that's determined to get into a wireless network is going to be stopped by WEP. That's a given. WEP is way more than enough, though, to keep the causal Joe Sixpack in the next apartment from leeching your access. The quality of this board depends on the quality of the posts. The only way to guarantee thoughtful, informative discussion is to write thoughtful, informative posts. AppleNova is not a real-time chat forum. You have time to compose messages and edit them before and after posting. |
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reticulating your mom
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So Brad, is this program for OS X?
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Selfish Heathen
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Zone of Pain
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Well, yes and no. It's C code that is very portable, but Apple's AirPort cards do not support the monitor mode that's necessary for this kind of work. The professor himself uses a PowerBook and didn't realize this limitation until I pointed it out to him. So, he scaled back the project a bit and instead gave us a few sample streams of captured packets to work with.
The quality of this board depends on the quality of the posts. The only way to guarantee thoughtful, informative discussion is to write thoughtful, informative posts. AppleNova is not a real-time chat forum. You have time to compose messages and edit them before and after posting. |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2004
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I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. |
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Selfish Heathen
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Zone of Pain
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Another analogy (but, gawd, they're all flawed) would be if your neighbor came into your house while you're out and put a TV in your den. Can you use it? It's right there in your home; you're not actively going out to steal someone else's TV. The other person put it there and there's nothing on it that says you can't use it.
The quality of this board depends on the quality of the posts. The only way to guarantee thoughtful, informative discussion is to write thoughtful, informative posts. AppleNova is not a real-time chat forum. You have time to compose messages and edit them before and after posting. |
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