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Neighbour's Wireless Connection


Harut

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So lets assume my neightbor leaves the outside light on at nights and I sit by my pool a read the paper using his light.  he can sue me?

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Yes Azat jan, if you have money and you live in America the chances are you will be sued ;)

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The utopian idealist in me thinks that bandwith should be free for everyone. Everyone who has a wireless router should simply allow access for their neighbours - and if everyone does, soon entire cities will be covered in free wireless access. I think that would be pretty fab.

 

There's a not-for-profit here in Montreal attempting to do just that.... :)

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What an entertaining thread :P

PS. Does having access to your neighbor's wireless connection also mean that you can have access to what sites they visit?

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Yyyyyyyyyyup :) But only if they are using wireless also. If they have a PC wired to the router, then it's not often that easy to spy on them. But if they are surfing wirelessly on open net like that, then you can get to see all the sites they visit :ph34r:

 

Of course the other way it works too ... they can get to see everything you do in their network. They could even intercept and record ALL your transmissions. You shouldn't worry too much if you are surfing on an encrypted website though (like doing online banking).

 

But things like instant messages and emails are typically NOT encrypted so they can get to see ALL of that. :o

Edited by Sip
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Well, considering people break top notch security measures and firewalls, ANYTHING is possible when it comes to things like this.

 

However, most routers typically block access into their internals if they are set up properly. They also typically don't broadcast things going on the "wires" over the wireless. So that's why it's not a trivial thing to just sit there on the wireless and evesdrop on the wired communication in the router.

 

Now it MAY be possible for an attacker eavesdropping on the wireless to get to learn the password of the router and go in there and change settings around (if the user logs into the router wirelessly to change settings, thereby broadcasting the password). But it's not as easy as just sitting there and looking at the wireless communication that ANYONE can do without much advanced knowledge of security and breaking into things. The information about what sites you are surfing are literally out there in the open for anyone to see when using an open wireless network.

Edited by Sip
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LOL I must have missed that one :)

Of course you could set-up some sort of user authentication system, and get 'everyone' whose participating to cooperate. Than you could have free 'protected' wireless networks everywhere - and it would be just a little bit safer, as the users are responsible for what happens under their log-in.

 

If you can read french see Ile sans fil - means Wireless Island. They also have a MAP of the locations available. It's been growing steadily.... I'm sure you guys could get this happening in LA, non?

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Yah - but the scenarios Sip has describes would be very very rare. It's not easy to snif packets and put together a coherent  series enough to get a username and password.

 

I think in the most part it's safe - but WEP protection is much better.

 

Vava, sniffing wireless packets in an open network is TRIVIAL. Heck Ethereal will even break down the packets for you and let you see everything from mac address and source/dest IP to protocol info and data! So not only do you get to see what websites someone is surfing, you can also see what it is they are actually looking at without much effort.

 

Now granted someone who has trouble using Ms Word won't figure this out ... but it is part of homework #1 in my intro to networking class :) The other caveat is sometimes ethereal has problems in windows and some NICs so being a linux user also helps in making it easier. I'd say an above average teen with enough free time and an internet connection (duh!) could easily figure all this out on her own.

 

But I agree with you that sniffing wired traffic from wireless is not that easy. Also, although WEP can be broken, it is definitely better than nothing. But for that, you can take a look at airsnort. :o

Edited by Sip
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There was a guy in LAX that they caught recently who would buy a ticket to allow him to get into the terminal area. he would get his signal from SB and had setup another wireless router and people would login to the net using his connection thinking they were getting access via some legit company and they would input their credit card number and such. and after they were gone he would use their credit card numbers for thousands of dollars. Pretty cool and smart guy I would say.
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A friend and former FDIC enforcer (the guy who sent Charles Keating to prison) picked up a laptop 2 days ago.

 

The first thing I showed him was how to log on to all of that "free" pipe contaminating his living space.

 

It turns out he had 4 different networks he could log on from his living room.

 

A BIG THANK YOU to all who have helped build an almost seamless network in Irvine with their home and business routers.

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my notebook has died on me a week ago... i've sent it back to dell for repair... this is my couse's notebook i'm using (fujitsu)... no such thing has happened so far...

actually, i'm impressed by the wireless hardware performance... this thing catches wireless signals like magnet... my dell (actually, external netgear wireless network adapter) had never detected the neighbor's network that i was talking at the beginning... but this thing connects to it with medium speed...

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