I Got Busted Instead.

[nadirah]

-{ Quote: "STRANGER POSTS BOMB HOAX MESSAGE WITH MY NET ACCOUNT
I GOT BUSTED INSTEAD
By Celine Lim
February 26, 2007

LOUD knocking at the front door interrupted her afternoon nap.
Bleary-eyed, she walked out of her bedroom and was shocked to be confronted by a group of plain-clothes police officers." }-

Story (http://tnp.sg/news/story/0,4136,123796,00.html?)

[Tarq57]

Well. That's a pretty heavy duty fright/inconvenience for being a bit naive about a wireless connection.
Not at all surprised. A friend has a wireless lappie he sometimes uses at work. There are usually 4 and up to 8 unsecured networks available. Says it's the same everywhere.
These people are leaving themselves wide open. If they don't know to secure a wireless, what's the bet they don't bother too much about updating their AV sub. when it expires.

[ThunderZ]

-{ Quote: "Well. That's a pretty heavy duty fright/inconvenience for being a bit naive about a wireless connection.
Not at all surprised. A friend has a wireless lappie he sometimes uses at work. There are usually 4 and up to 8 unsecured networks available. Says it's the same everywhere.
These people are leaving themselves wide open. If they don't know to secure a wireless, what's the bet they don't bother too much about updating their AV sub. when it expires." }-



I have toyed with a bit of war driving myself. Never for malicious purposes, but just to see what was out there in the way of open networks. I could not, and you would not believe how many open networks are out there and in some pretty remote places.
Related story. A short time ago I configured a 2 PC in home network for my Aunt and Uncle. He had bought the router without conferring with anyone other then the salesperson. What he wound up with is a Linksys 4 port with wireless capabilities. Totally unneeded as he was only attempting to network 2 towers to share his DSL connection. Of course this left the wireless wide open with out of the box settings. Being 80+ years old he had no idea. While I am a firm believer in personal responsibility, I feel he was taken advantage of by the sales person and sold more then what he needed which left him open to at the very least to theft of his band width, at the most, something much like the story Nadirah posted. Also since he does keep personal info. on his PC the possibility of identity theft as well. So, IMO, the problem is 2 fold. An uneducated general public and uneducated\uncaring supposedly in the know sales people who take advantage of them.

[Ice_Czar]

Id extend that to the manufacturers as well
only selling the upside utility value without strong enough cautions and educational resources
a nice little red booklet included in the package saying
DANGER! Danger! Will Robinson!
would make a huge difference :P

[lodore]

that is a horrible story.
most well known router companies have passwords like admin and no encryption enabled e.g. linksys and netgear. bt routers like the voyager 2091 and the home hub have wireless encryption enabled but only 64bit wep.
wireless routers maybe be useful and free of wires but as the story goes the companies like linksys and netgear should get there act together and enable encryption as default.
lodore