Marlborough Wi-Fi

Wireless Bandits

A local paper, the Marlborough Midweek, ran a front page article on wardriving today. I have scanned and copied the article below for your enjoyment. As far as I can tell no members were involved. I’m not so sure about the part that claims securing your connection can be difficult; most access points include a wizard to do this as the first part of setting up.

Wi-fi connections at risk from bandwidth theives

Marlburians who use a wireless connection to hook up to the internet had better watch out - unwanted hitch-hikers could be using their systems to get a free ride on to the internet.

A Blenheim couple found this out for themselves last week when they caught an unwanted person hooking up to their wi-fi connection.

Hairdresser Krissy Armstrong and her boyfriend Brendon have had a wireless broadband connection in their Blenheim home for a year and never had any security concerns until last Wednesday night when they saw something suspicious on the road outside their house.

“We went to get diesel and we saw somebody sitting in their car on the side of the road using their laptop in front of them,” says Krissy. “It took us a second to realise what they were probably doing, so we headed back inside to check our connection.”

Inside they found the lights on their wireless router blinking furiously, showing that somebody was accessing their internet connection.

Krissy says that after Brendon switched the router off, she saw the reaction from the people in the car.

“They suddenly looked frustrated with their computer as if they couldn’t figure out what was happening and then they took off.”

Krissy and Brendon then followed the car and confronted the people inside, but she says they didn’t appear too worried about what they had done.

“They were quite adamant they had not done anything wrong and wouldn’t apologise or anything. They just kept saying it was free, it might have been for them, but we’re the ones who have to actually pay for it. I thought they were just rude.”

Annoyed by the attitude of the users hitching on to their system, the couple contactecd the police who told them that no crime had been committed.

But Constable Don mattison of Blenheim police says this have been a misunderstanding, and that it was an offense under section 252 of the Crimes (Ammendment) Act 2003.

The ammendments were made to keep pace with technology and includes issues such as fraudulently using people’s internet access, downloading another person’s cellphone address book or using other people’s passwords for internet sites.

There is a maximum penalty of two years’ imprisonment for unlawful access to a computer system, he says.

He says that it is not that common in Blenheim but police were investigating a similar case at the moment.

“It is more common in larger centres,” he says.

Last year a wireless hijacker in the United Kingdom was convicted and fined more than $1000 for doing the same thing, while arrests have also been made in the United States on a similar charge.

Since catching people using their connection, Krissy and Brendon have looked into putting greater security on their computer systems.

They originally got the wireless connection because the room they wanted to set the computer up in did not have a telephone jack they could use.

While it appears unauthorised use of their router and service has not had a great affect on their computer, Krissy says they would have no control over what was being downloaded and that could come back to bite them.

“We have a three-gig limit on what we can download and if we went over that we get with penalty charges. It wouldn’t take that much to push us up over that.”

What you can do to stop them…

With a number of different wireless systems on the market, protecting your internet connection from being accessed can be difficult.

But most wireless hardware comes with an installation CD that has steps people can take to protect their machines, registering them with the hardware so that only the proper computer would get access.

Passwords can be put on computers to stop people using the connection.

Telecom spokesman Sean Martin says most people do take those steps, so cases of illegal accessing are rare in New Zealand.

“Because of things like spyware, most people have become pretty diligent about security.”

Sean that says that if the registering part was skipped during installation, computer users could still use the installation CD to secure their hardware.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 23rd, 2006 at 00:19 NZST and is filed under Security. It has been viewed 914 times. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.