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Connecting to an unsecured wireless network
Well, while I was trying to fix my internet connection (long story short, the cable from the router to the modem was unplugged), I noticed that there's a new wireless network in town. That makes two as far as my wifi card can see. I noticed that the SSID was an unoriginal "linksys" and figured that there was no WEP in place. Fire up netstumbler for a confirmation; that network's open wider than an unpatched windows box. What did I do? I told my wifi card to connect. Success.
Since my neighborhood's not too densely settled, I think that the network belongs to one of two neighbors near me. My question is, what could someone with access to a network like that actually do that could be harmful? I know that you could leech bandwidth, but is there anything else? I want to know whether I should find my neighbor this weekend or bring it up in a conversation later. |
Any open network is at risk for a number of things. Either way, you should find the person with the open network and tell them, if you care that much.
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You can either do one of two things, exploit their ignorance about networking or you can be a good citizen and inform them and educate them about the importance of securing their network. Who knows, maybe they want it open on purpose. One of my co-workers has a neighbor that has an open router and he keeps it that way so my co-worker can use his bandwidth. Maybe your neighbor has something like that going on.
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I know I probably have no credibility on the 'net, but I'm curious and kinda want to know how to "do something". I'd never do anything malicious.
*waits to be modded for technically asking how to hack* |
I believe that with a wide open network, that it's possible to find and hack any computer that is on the network. This does assume some of the following, if the wireless network isn't secure, the pc's connected to the network don't have the latest security patches/firewall/up to date antivirus/etc. If someone wanted to be evil, they could either plant a trojan to get any private info on the pc, or use it as a "zombie" machine for spamming/spreading viruses/etc.
I don't think that most people would do more then leech internet access tho, but sometimes it's good to know what an evil person could do/try to do. |
You could always perform a little ARP poisoning attack and, for instance, send them to some porn site every time they want to go to Google. Of course, there are much more dangerous things you can do with ARP poisoning, which I refuse to go into. I believe you should be a good neighbor and let them know about their mistake.
On a lighter note, you could always send documents to their printer. That always freaks my neighbors out... |
three of my neighbors had wide open wireless networks. i didnt really need the access so decided to give them some hints to tighten things up. logged in to their routers, disabled wireless, set an admin password and rebooted the router.
One of them had wep running after that. the other two just used hardware reset and went right back to wide open. so i changed their SSID's to HACK_ME and HACK_ME2. One of them got the hint from that and fixed his network. HACK_ME2 is still wide open though. Personally i dont bother with WEP I tend to move pretty big files from my server to laptop and dont like the performance hit. but i disable SSID broadcast, disable DHCP, only allow enough IP addresses for my equipment and MAC filter connections. |
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101 non-food uses for mayonnaise. Well, it's not that I can't figure out the IP of the router. The signal is just so faint in here. My router is no more than fifteen feet away, and sometimes the singal drops to low. I swear, there's lead paint on the walls, or something. ;) |
i also have a neigbhor with a unsecure router.... i've allways wonder if it is illegal or anything to connect to peoples internet.... because in a way, it's kinda like stealing internet.... it reminds me of those old t.v. commericals about stealing cable tv
i have my own network, which is secured, soo i don't have to worry about it, lol :D |
I just bought a house and one of my neighbors has a wireless router. No WEP enabled buy I thing she had the MAC filtering turned on becasue my card can't access it. But net stumbler says it's wide open. Go figure.
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I hate to ruin the "how can I hack into my neighbor's router to show him a thing or two about how stupid he is" party, but why don't you turn your idle time into a money-making venture?
Wardrive 'round the neighborhood and get an idea of the open access points. Print up some flyers and stick them in people's doors offering to secure their home network for $100. You may be surprised at what business you get. |
Some people use unsecured wireless networks as a decoy. I've considered doing it myself just to amuse the wardrivers around here. Basically all you do is setup an old wireless router to broadcast SSID with no security enabled. Just don't hook it up to your network.
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It's not swindling. The majority of people don't "get" computers. A friend runs a "fix your pc in your home" business and he does stuff just like that, along with hardware installs, formatting, spyware removal, etc. He charges $40 and you'd be surprized at how many visits are minimum of 2 hours. It isn't like they can take their router into the nearest Best Buy or Circuit City and have them setup security for them, especially if they don't know they need to secure anything!
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Or be a good samaritan (sp?) and create a document that says how to secure their network, and print it out on their system.
Nah, too easy :-P |
Where's the fun and the $$$ in that? :D
God idea rubicon. That's actually part of my new consulting business. |
I'd be surprised if people paid $100 for enabling WPA.
But who knows? Mr Mephisto |
You'd be surprised man, you'd be surprised.
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There is actually quite a bit you can do with a little know-how on an unsecure wireless connection. I got $150 to setup my neighbors wireless router and firewall, I enabled WEP. He initially just bought the router, but I showed him that it needed to be secured by printing 101 uses for sporks on his printer. He offered the $150 to setup security, install a firewall and get everything fine tuned. Took about an hour.
Oh incase you wanted to know about 101 uses for sporks: http://www.angelfire.com/punk/spiffyangel/101uses.html |
My original suggestion was based on using your knowledge for something positive. Secure their WAP for free, a six-pack, charge $100, charge $10. People will pay you what you ask or what they feel it's worth.
It seems funny to me that people's first instincts are to "teach someone a lesson" for what they don't know. Instead, educate them. Maybe they'll educate the next person and before you know it, every wi-fi in the neighborhood will be secured. Or you'll have made some extra money. |
I have two unsecured WAP's that are within the range of my receiver.
In an effort to help, I put up a flyer on the mailboxes explaining the situation and even offering to help, if help was needed. Nobody contacted me and the WAP's stayed unsecure, nothing was done. I checked a few days ago (after originally reading this thread) and both are now gone, so, who knows. But, for as long as they stayed unsecure, I am guessing that the people just didn't care. |
ummm, not sure if i should post this or not...
im a poor college student and I couldnt afford internet anymore and it got disconnected. After being netless for a while my dad came and visited me w/ his laptop. I live in a downtown sector so we found a unsecure network he could connect to the net with. My dad bought me a wireless network card and I am now connecting to the net w/ this. This is actually only my second day like this, but am I causing harm to myself/cpu. or am i just using someone elses bandwidth? |
You're just using someone else's bandwidth.
You shouldn't be doing this, but it's not harming your computer. It's kinda just like stealing apple-pie from an open window... Mr Mephisto |
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the way i see it is that its like stealing apple-pie but still leaving the apple pie there. |
Accessing someone else's network is against the law in the USA, and depending on how you read the laws, a Federal Crime as well. (capital letters necessary)
http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/1030_new.html There's too much to quote, but a post from the netstumbler forums sums it up nicely. Quote:
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What are some other things you guys reccomend for Wireless Security?
I've changed our SSID. I disabled SSID broadcast but then nothing worked (?) I'm using the cheap linksys shit (BEFW11S4 :/). A friend of mine who works for Cisco says that WEP does cause a major hit on performance (which already seems bad; family doesn't like our WLAN too much). Haven't heard a peep about WPA though. I have yet to change the admin password for some reason. I think I may just disable DHCP as it's causing big problems with port forwarding and my server! |
You could, of course, disable DHCP, but what I'd recommend doing (in addition to a number of other things that have already been mentioned) is to enforce MAC filtering. Make a list of all of the MAC addressess of any device connected to your network, then restrict access to your network to only your MAC addresses. If you need help with how to set this up, I'm sure you'll find ample help here. Don't be afraid to ask.
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I run a small network for a group of friends living in bedsit accommodation. Due to the high faff potential, and potential performance hit, I haven't enabled WEP or WPA and rely on MAC filtering to keep the network secure. In fact, I occasionally allow the DHCP server to give out a few ips to unrecognised computers who are then given a very slow access to the net (going through the dhcp server using iptables etc).
What is the real risk of someone being able to use the network without my permission? I'm thinking it would probably be a matter of sitting with a sniffer for a few minutes to 'steal' a recognised MAC address. Would it be that easy? |
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If they're not gonna disconnect, you can boot them off. This requires two wifi cards or two computers. Have one card spoof the MAC, etc. of an AP and start flooding a computer with deassociate (disconnect) frames. Have the other card spoof the MAC, etc. of the computer you're booting and try to associate with the AP. Because you're drowning the target PC with a deassociate DOS attack, it'll be easy to override it. |
Wow! :-D
I took an A+ course this year (98/98 on final; recieved merit for that last night :D), but i'm taking Net+ next year. This will be fun :) |
when i found someone on my wifi, I kept slowly disabling things like sending email but able to receive it. Disabled some URLs like google.com yahoo.com, disabled AIM/IRC, VPN, disabled the ability to use HTTPS.
took about 2 weeks to get this person off my router. |
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:) Mr Mephisto |
Well if you REALLY want to be evil...... you can do what someone did at defcon to get rid of people leeching your internet connection.
http://www.evilscheme.org/defcon/ I did mention that it was really evil right? :D |
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