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hacker alert

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Rhys Sage

pro member
Today my wife was trying to get online and found her connection wasn't working well. I checked and somebody had set up an ad-hoc network of the same name as our house network. The first thing I did was to conceal the SSID and then change the SSID and password. This is the first time in about 3 years that I have found somebody trying to hack our home network. I therefore recommend that if you have a home network that you immediately hide the SSID and then change your SSID and passwords. I don't know whether this is a criminal offence but I suspect it is and it was a shame I couldn't get the guy's MAC address.
 
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Bart_van_der_Wolf

pro member
Rhys Sage said:
I therefore recommend that if you have a home network that you immediately hide the SSID and then change your SSID and passwords. I don't know whether this is a criminal offence but I suspect it is and it was a shame I couldn't get the guy's MAC address.
Click to expand...

Hi Rhys,

Even more importantly, activate WAP2 encryption instead of WEP and use a high quality cryptographic-strength password (>20 random characters, 63 is preferred). A trusted site for generating strong passwords for this purpose can be found here.

What's known as 'war-driving', is probably within the legal possibilities to use publicly available signals in most juridictions. However hacking security measures, and using someone else's bandwith (or worse, use it for illicit activity), is most likey a criminal offence. In the Netherlands it's considered similar to breaking and entry of one's property.

Bart
 
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Rhys Sage

pro member
Bart_van_der_Wolf said:
Hi Rhys,

Even more importantly, activate WAP2 encryption instead of WEP and use a high quality cryptographic-strength password (>20 random characters, 63 is preferred). A trusted site for generating strong passwords for this purpose can be found here.

What's known as 'war-driving', is probably within the legal possibilities to use publicly available signals in most juridictions. However hacking security measures, and using someone else's bandwith (or worse, use it for illicit activity), is most likey a criminal offence. In the Netherlands it's considered similar to breaking and entry of one's property.

Bart
Click to expand...

I know in the UK it's illegal to use somebody else's network. I think it probably is here. The guy was clearly on a phishing trip for passwords. He had a parallel network set up. Anyway, we now have a hidden SSID - WPA-PSK (as before) and I'm adding Mac filtering. If I could have got his Mac address then I could have reported him.
 
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Anil Mungal

New member
Rhys Sage said:
I know in the UK it's illegal to use somebody else's network. I think it probably is here. The guy was clearly on a phishing trip for passwords. He had a parallel network set up. Anyway, we now have a hidden SSID - WPA-PSK (as before) and I'm adding Mac filtering. If I could have got his Mac address then I could have reported him.
Click to expand...

Don't think his MAC address would have helped, as you can change it if you want (search for "MAC address spoofing").
 
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Rhys Sage

pro member
Anil Mungal said:
Don't think his MAC address would have helped, as you can change it if you want (search for "MAC address spoofing").
Click to expand...

Hmm... Yes and I just found some very interesting software.... http://www.gorlani.com/publicprj/macmakeup/macmakeup.asp

Well, my home network has:

hidden SSID
WPA-PSK
Mac filtering.

I don't think I can make it any stronger than that!

I'm heading off to do a security upgrade to a couple of the networks I administer later.
 
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