Hijacking a broadband connection

I think we would be wise to defer to Richard Clayton who is an expert on these matters.

Mike.

Do you? I have never used one, but have assumed from the signs that it is freely available. Are the burger-flippers able to provide a customer with a temporary login?

In article , Mike Mann writes

I would put it that the "account" maps directly to/from the CLI...

... yes indeed. Such systems generally insist on CLI (or are run by a telco that can access SS7 information). For if not they cannot prevent ongoing abuse; and that is tantamount to commercial suicide :(

that said, there have been ISPs in the past who failed this clue test, but I expect they've addressed the issue by now :)

If they are a large telco they may well be able to :) but I agree with your general point, that data from another entity would be needed to trace the connection to its originating point.

Of course if that originating point was a PAYG mobile then even more logs would need to be consulted to form a view as to its ownership.

No. But I would expect you to maintain your car in a roadworthy condition and drive it in a safe manner. The same way as (more on topic) I would expect you to maintain and operate your TV and other electronic equipment such that it does not cause excessive radio interference and get it fixed if it does. Even though you may know nothing about electronics or car mechanics, you are still liable if your electronic equipment causes radio interference or if a fault in your car causes an accident. Or, again in the realm of cars, I am sure that an excuse of "that is how the lights behaved when I switched them on" would not be acceptable to either the police officer who stops you for inappropriate use of dipped/full beam headlights nor to the magistrates when charged with driving without due care and attention (or whatever the charge might be).

If I might use yet another analogy. If a drinks vending machine were to come set by default to 'free vend' and the owner placed the machine in an area open to the public without changing it from 'free vend', I do not think they would have any cause for complaint when they returned and discovered that nobody had paid for the drinks. Similarly with a wireless router, or other complex piece of equipment, if the default configuration is not what the owner requires, then it should be changed. Whether or not the configuration is changed, the state it is in *should* be able to be taken as being the owner's intention.

Just because they don't show what you would like them to show, does not make them bad analogies.

And nor does just saying "another bad analogy". Explain *why* if you think it is a bad one.

In what way?

Apart from being perfectly relevant, of course.

I think you are using the "bad analogy" response wherever you can't actually come up with an argument against it.

You mean it agrees with you, although without really saying anything other than that the author's opinion is that it is a very low level crime.

Nor has anyone been able to come up with a great one yet.

A proper analogy must meet the following criteria:

1. The service is very often intentionally provided for free by businesses, and municipalities,

2, The service is very often intentionally provided for free by individuals,

1. Some businesses have decided to charge for the service, rather than give it away free,
2. Some individuals and businesses don't want others to use the service so they prevent others from using the it, with security measures that cost them nothing to implement,
3. Some individuals and businesses don't care if anyone uses the service, nor do they encourage the use of the service either; hence they take no steps to prevent the use by others, but neither do not advertise the availability of it,
4. Some individuals and businesses don't want anyone else to use the service, but they are too lazy or dumb to take steps to prevent the use by other,
5. The user of the service has no reasonable way of determining whether free providers of the service are doing it intentionally, or doing it because they are lazy or dumb.
6. The user's equipment will often automatically use the service, without the knowledge of the user.
7. No real financial harm occurs to the provider when a user uses the service.

No, I mean that it is logical, and well thought out, a skill that you have not yet mastered,.

Please explain why you think so. You've used the "bad analogy" line several times now without qualification in response to a carefully considered and presented argument. Without any argument at all in their support, those words don't really mean anything.

We are talking about the rightness or wrongness of taking someone else's property without their permission. Specifically, the "property" is the use of a wireless internet service, and various people (including myself) have suggested examples where the "property" is something more familiar and tangible, in the hope that it will make the situation easier to understand.

I suggest that the morality of taking what isn't yours is the same regardless of what the thing you take actually is, or how careless the owner has been in neglecting to protect it to what you might consider an appropriate standard, because it is simply the fact that it belongs to someone else that makes it wrong to take it. This is certainly the concept of "ownership" that I was brought up to recognise, though maybe you have acquired a different one.

If you think it is acceptable to take some items of other people's property without their permission, while not acceptable to take other items, which is to say that the *nature* of someone's property is what determines whether thay have exclusive ownership of it, then please explain your understanding of what it means to own something.

Rod.

Wong on both counts.

It doesn't make any points you haven't already made.

I'm sure that you understand why stealing a car is very different than a computer connecting to a wireless signal that the owner may or may not have intended to be open to others.

I do not believe there is any accurate analogy.

Before I was married I had a girlfriend whose last name was Wong, and another girlfriend whose last name was White. Sometimes I got confused between White and Wong.

White. The points were good points by both me and the article in question.

Well, I remember, but I'm not gonna remind anyone how badly I can screw up sometimes. Kinda ruined my illusion of infallibility.

The appellate court and I disagree. There was about 6-8 weeks between when he did the first password crack and the 2nd password crack. The prosecution elected to consider that two counts and the appellate court agreed because he had ample time in between to inform Intel of what he was doing. If he was going to tell them, then he blew his chance.

That what I consider to be the problem. Intel did not incur any losses other than legal costs which they instigated.

Well, ok. Few of us have any real experience in dealing with the legal machinery. We generally assume it to be logical, rational, and expedient. Instead, we find it to be vindictive, insane, and anything but logical. I guess he found out the hard way. Probably the first victim of wireless intrusion prosecution will fall for the same illusions.

A $200,000 hole in his bank account and a substantial amount of lost working time is punishment enough. Very few people seem to know the cirumstances surrounding the case which leads me to suspect Intel remains unaffected. Perhaps the hackers all know the details, but Joe SixPack still buys computahs with Intel CPU's.

My guess is that guy in Florida is not going to be the first. There are too many complications and the case is insufficiently interesting to attract the attention of the higher courts. He also probably doesn't have the money to persue the issue to its legal conclusion.

the only time I have actually used one in McDonalds was in Florida, TBH I can't remember if I paid for a thingummy at the counter to use it or used a credit card on the sign-in screen the laptop was pushed to....

In the UK the hotspots are BT Openzone

Phil

2wire routers come pre-configured for the major ISP's: setup, you can easily screw up the config by logging in and tweaking. There's even a manual generic config (at bottom of page). I don't care if they come pre-configured, as long as I can change everything.

You can probably handle configuring your own wireless router. However, you are NOT Joe Sixpack, who wants plug-n-play operation and a painless out of box experience. Here's a working and proven solution to the default insecure open router problem, and you claim that it's somehow an inconvenience for you. For your purposes, it doesn't matter if the router is shipped secured or insecured, you're going to play with the settings anyway. That would be: 1. router password 2. SSID 3. WEP enabled 4. WEP key That's all of 4 things that are different between the currently insecure by default router and the way 2wire ships them. Somehow, I don't think that's a major inconvenience for you.

I'll stand on my claim that you're being slightly hypocritical.

How's 3 million routers since Jan 2004?

'm not sure about the mix of models, but I would suggest that a substantial percentage are wireless. Also, the wired versions are alse shipped secured with pre-assigned passwords. Major customers are SBC, Telmex, and BT.

Radio is a medium, and so is television, as is a newspaper. You can use such media as you see fit... the newspaper makes good fishwrap, or covers the bottom of the bird cage, but none of them provides enough heat to keep your house warm.

He meant the content, the "broadcast". Don't try selling that, because the owners will get really testy about it.

Who said anything about stealing?

Just because you don't want to accept it!

There is no such thing as an *accurate* analogy, for anything. That is why they are analogies.