Florida Man Charged With Stealing Wi-Fi Signal

[Itsme]

Florida Man Charged With Stealing Wi-Fi Signal

July 7, 2005

In one of the first cases involving this practice, Benjamin Smith faces a pretrial hearing this month.

By The Associated Press

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP)--Police have arrested a man for using someone else's wireless Internet network in one of the first criminal cases involving this fairly common practice.
Benjamin Smith III, 41, faces a pretrial hearing this month following his April arrest on charges of unauthorized access to a computer network, a third-degree felony.

Police say Smith admitted using the Wi-Fi signal from the home of Richard Dinon, who had noticed Smith sitting in an SUV outside Dinon's house using a laptop computer.

The practice is so new that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement doesn't even keep statistics, according to the St. Petersburg Times, which reported Smith's arrest this week.

Innocuous use of other people's unsecured Wi-Fi networks is common. But experts say that illegal use often goes undetected, such as people sneaking on others' networks to traffic in child pornography, steal credit card information, and send death threats. Security experts say people can prevent such access by turning on encryption or requiring passwords, but few bother or even know how to do so.

Wi-Fi, short for Wireless Fidelity, has enjoyed prolific growth since 2000. Millions of households have set up wireless home networks that allow people to use the Web from their backyards but also reach the house next door or down the street.

Prosecutors declined to comment, and a working phone number could not be located for Smith.

[navyones]

It will be interesting to see how this case plays out in court. I can't see the man getting anything more than a slap on the wrist.

[Merlin]

Now where have I seen this before? (http://www.gotapex.com/forums/showthread.php?t=89609)

[cheapie]

with a heading like the other post, you can't hardly blame him for the repost

[verve247]

To be honest i didn't know where to post it. It involves the internet but also wireless routers and a laptop so maybe hardware? Though I think Offtopic is the best place since it already contains many threads covering the dangers of Florida. :shifty:

[ski]

Here is my expert analysis (I had to comment on a regulation/ruling in communications, I chose this story)

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With the advent of widely available and consumer-priced wireless local area network (WLAN) equipment, 802.11 access points have become ubiquitous in homes across America. The promise of internet access from any point in a home is a draw to consumers, but many do not realize the wireless signal can be received from anywhere up to hundreds of feet outside of a home. Added to this a general disregard for enabling wireless security features, the home access point has become a popular place for mobile warriors armed with notebook computers and 802.11 receivers to “leech” internet connections.

The case of a St. Petersburg man’s arrest for using someone else’s wireless signal presents an interesting discussion about wireless security. First and foremost, wireless security is a topic of great interest currently, as many of the security protocols are extremely flawed. The first line of defense in home wireless security is to disable broadcasting of the access point’s SSID. This precaution is easily countered with any wireless access point detection software such as NetStumbler. Next, MAC address filtering can be enabled, which can allow or deny an incoming request for connection based on the MAC address of the device. The flaw with this filtering is that MAC addresses can be “spoofed,” so a valid MAC address can be acquired fairly easily. Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) is a popular security that encrypts the data sent over the WLAN. WEP, however, can cracked by sniffing out packets in the wireless traffic and computing the encryption key when enough packets have been gathered. Even Cisco’s advanced security protocol LEAP has been cracked with a program that can be run by an average home user. The best form of wireless security involves issuing users certificates and or encrypted passkeys that change frequently, all handled by a separate server. This is very unrealistic for a home user to implement, so to summarize the culpability of the access point’s operator, it is reasonable to say that there is little one can do to keep a determined hotspot seeker out of a home access point.

However, on the side of the user who has connected to an access point not of his own, there are several points to discuss. Any installation of Windows XP that is not patched to the current Service Pack 2 has a built-in wireless receiver interface that automatically connects to the strongest network for which the user has credentials. On unprotected access points, no credentials are required, so it is possible for a computer to be simply turned on and registered on the site without any user interaction. In addition, had this man been a neighbor and accessed the hotspot from his living room, would the owner of the access point have known? Chances are if the access point was unprotected or minimally protected, the operator would not be looking at the device’s log files to notice.

The issue in my opinion is not that a man was stealing a wireless signal. The issue lies in a physical security of an unknown vehicle parked outside of a home for an extended period of time. Even if the access point operator had discovered somebody was using his network, the police would not have been able to assist in the “theft.” Wireless security is a never-ending game of cat and mouse, and this charge now shows that a mouse in clear view will certainly be caught.

[kame]

say say what??

j/k