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11 Responses to “Secure that wifi”

1. Jake Says:
   October 20th, 2010 at 9:46 am

   A good password is the minimum you should have. I also have my router set to not broadcast its SSID, so that it doesn’t show up on anyone’s wifi list unless they already know I have named it.

   Something else that is important to remember is that once someone is connected to your router, they also have a path to any of your devices or computers that are connected to that router. So you should use a decent login password on your computer, too. Imagine the situation if the neighbor had gotten into his computer and created a hidden folder on it to store her porn.

2. John Smith. Says:
   October 20th, 2010 at 9:47 am

   That is called overzealous policing. It would not have taken but a few minutes to find out what his ip address was…. Each computer has an individual one. Plus if any files were sent out they are subtly encoded with the computers individual identifier…. Time for a lawsuit as the police did not perform their due diligence. Also for those who have unsecured wireless it is NOT a crime. It is funny how the police can ruin your life over laws you have not broken yet turnabout is not fair play….

3. Gunmart Says:
   October 20th, 2010 at 10:12 am

   Actually, its not that big of a deal. I have heard of two cases where this happened and they immediatly figured out who was actually doing it.

   Having your door kicked in is another matter all together. They shouldnt need to do that even if they have the right house.

4. ben Says:
   October 20th, 2010 at 11:31 am

   Good to use WPA encryption instead of WEP. WEP can be cracked, WPA cannot.

5. bob r Says:
   October 20th, 2010 at 11:55 am

   “It would not have taken but a few minutes to find out what his ip address was…. Each computer has an individual one. Plus if any files were sent out they are subtly encoded with the computers individual identifier….”

   You seem to be implying that the IP address of the computer *receiving* the file will be encoded in the file but this is _not_ correct. If any IP address is encoded in the file, it will be the IP address of the _router_. And on top of that, it is very unlikely that the IP address will be encoded in the file at all. More likely, it will just be part of the data packet and will not be associated with the file at all when the file is delivered to the final computer.

6. geekWithA.45 Says:
   October 20th, 2010 at 12:10 pm

   Strangely, I remember reading a case where having an insecure wifi portal proved to be an effective legal defense against some alleged cybercrime or another.

7. wizardpc Says:
   October 20th, 2010 at 12:43 pm

   It would not have taken but a few minutes to find out what his ip address was…. Each computer has an individual one.

   No, each computer has an individual MAC Address. An IP Address is specific to (in this case) the guy’s router. They DID trace the IP address to his router, which is why they knocked in his door. From there, they probably tried to find the machine with the MAC they were looking for.

8. Kristopher Says:
   October 20th, 2010 at 2:36 pm

   GeeK: Yep. A man in florida ( and a former gadfly on the old Free State forum ) kept an open hot spot, and a used a firewall that specifically did not keep logs, but disallowed smtp email and throttled bandwidth use to prevent the usual problems associated with open hot spots.

   Prosecutor tried to jail him on child porn charges and failed. They could not prove who was using his network to download the crap.

9. Dave R. Says:
   October 20th, 2010 at 2:50 pm

   Yeah, +1 on a strong password. Letters, numerals and characters. This is one you might choose to write down in a secure location rather than try to go with something you can remember easily but that other people can guess or hit on by brute force trial of common passwords.

10. Jake Says:
    October 20th, 2010 at 4:06 pm

    Yeah, +1 on a strong password. Letters, numerals and characters.

    Even better, use a passphrase. It’s still a lot harder to brute force “TK-421 why aren’t you at your post” than a 10-12 character random string, and it’s a lot easier to remember in case you lose that piece of paper you wrote it down on.

    Personally, I find that “a secure location” = I can’t remember where the #@!! I put the thing when I actually need it.

11. WallPhone Says:
    October 20th, 2010 at 6:34 pm

    This is likely the article Geek w/a 45 is referring to:

    http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/my_open_wireles.html

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