News Lincolnshire boy arrested over WiFi theft

If the owner can check DHCP tables, they can check WPA.

 

a crime? u ****in kidding me?

wireless is like your car. u buy a car and they give u a key to drive it. u can lock the car and bring the key with u for security, or u can leave the key in the car at all times and park it in the worst neighbourhood in town. car dealer dont care. car owners SHOULD.


anybody with unsecured wireless are just asking for it. getting somebody piggybacking on ur unsecured network is the cost of picking up a technology without the effort of knowing how to utilize it properly. like buying a goddamn ferrari and dont bother to figure out which one is the alarm button.


if people can't deal with it, then they should stick with wired networking.


(or a mac? rofl i heard their wireless is easy to secure and easy to use)

 

so wait wait, let me get this straight what your saying is that if someone leaves there car unlocked its okay to steal it? because well I could swear that is still considered theft? and by that logic its okay to break into someones house because they didnt lock a door??? huh thats new to me, when did they amend those laws?

I can see wifi stealing being right up their with stealing the neighbors cable, because someone is paying for it and your using it with out their agreement, granted people using wifi need to be better educated in securing it but theft is still theft no matter what excuse you try to give it. Your taking something without paying or without consent and that is theft.

 

It's a flawed analogy. The neighbour failed to lock his chocolates in a secure box and he let you know he had some chocolates, but it would be unfair to say that he placed a plate of chocolates in your house.

Clearly the kid shouldn't be prosecuted, but there is no compulsion for the neighbour to secure his router. It is sensible to do so (and even not broadcast the SSID), but currently there is no law to say he has less rights if he doesn't enable WPA.

The car analogy is also wrong. Just because a car is unlocked, it doesn't mean you can enter it. IANAL, but I'm pretty sure it is still against the law.

My mum forget the WPA key for her router so when my brother took his laptop to her house, went down the network list until she got access to t'interweb. She failed to connect to he own network, she failed to connect to on neighbour's secured network, but she succeeded in connecting to another neighbours network. It was odd that when I told her what she had done, she didn't seem to bothered and didn't want to change anything... FFS!

 

Personally i assume every unencrypted network an open hotspot. If the owner is simply too dumb or doesn't care, well, why should I care?

 

I was about to say that.

I think they over-reacted in this case. And I think that it should be up to the neighbor who was having his connection used as to whether or not charges are pressed. I mean did he incur extra usage fees, etc? But think this situation should have reached this height. If the kid was using it to torrent 100's of albums and such, then sure. But this? Nah.

Yes, the owner needs to take responsibility and encrypt his wifi. But until that becomes an automated program that runs upon first connect/boot-- the odds of it happening for the majority of the masses out there is slim. We lock our cars cause we know how and its easy. An unlocked car shouldn't be stolen. An unecrypted Wifi point shouldn't be KNOWINGLY used CONTINUOUSLY so that you don't have to PAY A BILL. But as the article said: The kid had a working net-connect. So it sounds like an honest mistake and just a glaring reminder of how badly a standard encryption needs to be made mandatory in this day and age.

Hope this came out intelligent and logical.

(PS - How many of you encrypt your Bluetooth with passwords? Or is it all Zeroes for you too? Just a thought before you continue to ream this guy for not encrypting his router.)

 

I might be wrong, but I've always considered using someone else's wireless connection without permission (secured or not) to count as illegal abstraction of other people's services and have always advised uni friends to avoid it.

 

Manuals? Who the heck reads those? I for one almost never read manuals... Hum... I wonder if that's why I had to spend an hour taking my staple gun apart because I loaded the staples incorrectly and jammed it. Well at least I did read the manual for installing the blade on the circular saw.

 

UK law 1995 was passed (cant pin the date guess) is an criminal offence to use an WiFi connection with out permission, Open or secured its very illegal to do, sothing like an £500 fine for doing it i think, 2-3 users have been pulled by police and openly admited that thay was connected to an open acces point with there laptop in turn thay got taken in and fined

but most cheapo wireless cards and belkin cards (same cheap) alot of them come preconfged to connect to an open network auto (all have the option to turn it off and on but most are turnd on) from house to house its an gray spot realy as some of my customers was connected to the next doors netgear router as his buffalo one stoped working but he knows how to turn the pc on thats about it

 

How the hell did they find this kid? I understand the whole hostname bit, but who was watching? If it was his neighbor, the guy's an assclown for not only failing to secure his network when he obviously knows what he's doing in a router, but also for ratting out the kid to the police instead of going over to his house to talk to him (or his parents) about it. Seriously, why would anyone do that? That's like just asking to get your house egged and your car keyed for the next five years.

 

Along the right lines there.

The Computer Misuse Act 1990 made unauthorised access to computer systems a criminal offence, which now carries a maximum penalty of two years imprisonment. The Communications Act 2003 also specifically made unauthorised access to a wireless network a criminal offence. Unauthorised in this context means without the permission of the owner/administrator. The level of encryption, security and so on is irrelevant - if you do not have permission of the owner you're committing a criminal offence. Leaving a wireless network unsecured does not automatically construe an invite to use it. This isn't obscure either - if he uses computers at school he should have been made aware of the law through their Acceptable Use Policy.

As for the unlocked car analogies, be as it may, it is still a criminal offence to Take Without Owner's Consent and the thief will be punished exactly the same regardless of whether the car was locked or unlocked.

 

why? the wifi signal is in your home.

couldn't broadcasting an SSID be considered giving permission to use the network? i leave my wifi open for anybody who needs to use it. are you saying that the cops could come by and arrest somebody who was using it for not having my explicit permission?

 

Some of people leave routers with no encryption to bait people to connect. Connecting to a router provides the owner with your IP. You may want free internet, but the person on the other end may want something back from your computer . The charge against the poor kid was ridiculous and I hope they sue the crap out of them for that crap. If anything, fine the owner of the wireless for being a moron.

 

Technicalities aside, I think more interesting is how the police dealt with the case (or not, as the case may be). They made basic mistakes and misassumptions and seem to have struggled with understanding the exact nature of what had happened and whether or not this constituted a crime. I think we are going to see this more often until the law catches up with technological knowledge. It is in this hazy landscape that companies like Davenport Lyons can exploit legal vagaries and ignorance to make a buck.

 

Hell yes it should be a crime. It's theft, whichever way you care to throw your peepers at it.

What I find more amusing, and slightly pathetic, is the Police reaction. They're clearly not clued up sufficiently to make even a bungled job of this.

 

Simple rule of thumb if its not yours , then it is theft, unless permission has been granted by the person who owns or pays for it.

 

No - it doesn't constitute having the owner's express permission to use the network.

For example, my university broadcasts the wifi SSID for the open access network. However, only students and staff actually have permission to use it. Anyone else attempting to is breaking the law.

 

Sky broadcast their signal across the entire country, but you still have to pay for subscription.

The mobile networks cover most peoples homes, but you are not allowed to listen in on everyones phone calls.

However, if you know of a technique that allows electomagnetic radiation to understand & respect ownership of land parcels, I'd be interested to hear it.

No.

Kiddy fiddlers and terrorists apparently use this technique - 'It wasn't me Guv; somebody else must have hacked in!'

Potentially. By law they can, but unless the intruder had malicious intent, you would hope that no further action would be taken.

 

People are also forgetting the valid point that some people may well leave their network unencrypted FOR others to use.

I disagree with the whole car is open, your fault if it gets stolen because I think no-one here would not want that person prosecuted. They took your car! However I have no problem at all with someone using a few of my spare bytes, nor should the law. Go crazy and I'll block your mac!

 

The whole story has holes.
As quite well a lot of people said above how is possible the offended person to resolve the computer name while he couldn't secure his own network. And how he found this in first place. Does he monitor the active connections on his router all the time?
And if he does, then something is fishy here don't you think?

He wanted for this thing to be done. Probably he changed the network name to the same as the neighbourgh one, having knowledge about the SSID (thats easy). Windows will connect to the same SSID without warning you about unsecure or secure connection if you have already agree to use that name.

Also at least here in UK all the mainstream providers who supply you with a router are already preconfigured with unique SSID and password. BT, Sky are some good examples. Only when you get your own router you have to do it. And 90% of the wifi routers have a tick box on the configuration to hide your SSID too. Like my cheap Dynamode.

Btw I live in Licolnshire (Gainsborough area), it could be more helpfull to know which local force did that. I have quite a few officers as neighbourghs