What is Digg?272 Comments
- hospitalcio, on 01/10/2008, -13/+175Finally, someone has it right. I am as worried about people stealing "my" Internet as I am worried about them stealing my oxygen. I have more than I need. Feel free to use it.
- paulmike3, on 01/10/2008, -9/+143You forgot the period at the end of your comment. Since your network is open, I easily collected your Digg password and corrected the punctuation. I hope you don't mind.
- MikeonTV, on 01/10/2008, -6/+103Scones taste best when stealing Internet
- searcade, on 01/10/2008, -0/+95All that in 115 Seconds? DUGG!
- inactive, on 01/10/2008, -2/+75I'm stealing internet right now
- whataboutdave, on 01/10/2008, -3/+61Bandwidth is my only objection to this piece.
- loginname, on 01/10/2008, -7/+61Yes, you are right, what would Bruce Schneier know about security...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Schneier
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect - dyranios2, on 01/10/2008, -8/+60I leave mine open but hide the SSID and have been fine. My biggest concern would be people accessing my files on my computer rather than them stealing my internet.
- breezytrees, on 01/10/2008, -2/+42When you live in a neighborhood with other families, you'll understand.
You probably live in an apartment/dorm shared with at least 50 other young people
I wouldn't be caught dead leaving my wifi open on campus surrounded by 1000 other students... but at home, I hope my neighbors cherish and use my free internet. I see it as something I do for the community I live in and love. - evilxhwnd, on 01/10/2008, -64/+103leaving your wifi network open is just plain stupid.
- breezytrees, on 01/10/2008, -2/+34my SSID in my home is "freeinternets" and its open :-)
- givinupthefight, on 01/10/2008, -4/+34In a possibly related story, the author was arrested 1 week later on approximately 900 counts of trafficking child pornography over the internet.
- Genthree, on 01/10/2008, -4/+33I agree with what you said, but there had to be a less gay way to say it.
- deacont23, on 01/10/2008, -0/+22Yes, in DD-WRT v24 you can have multiple SSID's on different VLAN's, so anyone on the open SSID does not have access to your private network.
- glxyjones, on 01/10/2008, -3/+25Dugg, not for the story, but for that ISP using the names "Bill" and "Linus" in such a clever way.
- doshindude, on 01/10/2008, -3/+24then put encryption on it.
- celeb, on 01/10/2008, -1/+21Seriously, forget about security... the real reason I lock down my wifi is so that I can use up all the bandwidth myself! Call me selfish.
- br0ck, on 01/10/2008, -0/+18Not if he's using traffic shaping. Many of the popular cheap wifi routers have mods available to support it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_shaping and http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1934575 ... gives some specifics on how to do it. It's highly useful for people without open wifi too since you can prioritize gaming and voip over downloads.
- mohitbs, on 01/10/2008, -0/+17I used to have my wireless network encrypted. But once I was on a trip with my laptop and needed to find something. Luckily I found an open wireless connection and was able to do it.
After that I came back and made my wireless network open. When its so easy to help people why not.
BW would not be an issue. Anybody trying to use your network would not overload it and risk getting nothing. - punchinelli, on 01/10/2008, -8/+25Just let one person connect to his network and start gigabytes worth of Bittorent downloads, along with an uncapped upload bandwidth for sharing the files, and his story would change......
- jlebrech, on 01/10/2008, -0/+15Name your SSID to Password collector, and noone will connect. Or something to that effect.
- andycr512, on 01/10/2008, -1/+15With an open network the traffic you're generating is unencrypted... Anyone nearby can see the websites you go to, the data you transfer, etc. if it is not being explicitly encrypted (as with SSL connections). I would recommend using 2 routers if you really want to share it - the main router with a WPA network, and the second router connected via ethernet with a wide-open network being hosted from it. Just make sure you remember to connect to the right one...
- wellyuk, on 01/10/2008, -3/+17*****
- wellyuk, on 01/10/2008, -0/+14And even then you're not completely secure. Real security? Don't hook yourself up to the internets.
- jdpalite, on 01/10/2008, -2/+16I don't have more than I need... especially upload bandwidth.
- fate3, on 01/10/2008, -0/+13i'm surprised at Bruce's view on this, quite opposite of what i expected, but an interesting read
- chrisatwork, on 01/10/2008, -10/+23Buried for being a retard.
- sirloin, on 01/10/2008, -0/+13dd-wrt, operwrt are cool
i live coovaAP for the easy setup of a walled garden (aka the freeloader wont have access to your network shares)
DD-wrt lets you do multiple sidds, one with encryption for your own use and access to your sahres, one with otu that doesnt. - cphelps, on 01/10/2008, -0/+12If you have WPA set up properly it's virtually impregnable. They key to your statement was "depending". Which should have read, "Depending on if you're a moron and use a ***** key, WPA can sometimes be cracked faster than WEP."
- bjs3171, on 01/10/2008, -1/+13thank you. now i have some retorts when people ask why i still don't have a key. honestly, it's just ***** annoying.
- inactive, on 01/10/2008, -1/+12ditto wholeheartedly.
One thing that I think does bear mentioning (and repitition, loudly) is that YOU STILL NEED A SECURE PASSWORD FOR THE ROUTER CONFIG PAGE (ahem, sorry for yelling) Leaving the *network* open is one thing, but leaving the *router* open is entirely another. If you leave the default passwords to access your router configuration, you may find that suddenly your network has security again...only you don't know the password this time. - thedude42, on 01/10/2008, -2/+13I put my home phone number on my SSID. I have only received a single phone call by some idiot stonners who didn't actually want access. One time in 4 years. They thought it was stupid I would put my phone number on my wireless network's SSID, in reality it has shown me something important: people would rather take a free open connection rather than call a neighbor who is advertising free wireless to get access.
My network set up is more secure for open wireless than others' open access points, I'm certain of that. My wireless doesn't share it's network id with the wired network of my home systems, so I'm not worried about anyone trying to exploit my other machines.
I do, however, want to know my neighbors and am totally open to sharing my internet with them.... if they ask. That is the only thing I require. Most people don't understand that the real danger is to your own laptop when you connect to some open network, that you put yourself at more risk doing that than opening your home wireless to anyone. I always find it interesting that this point is rarely made, but the argument over leaving a home network open or secured is the hot debate. Unless you're in a downtown or apartment setting, open wireless networks are fairly benign with regard to security risk... key word being "risk". It's riskier to connect to any open network you see available considering known vulnerabilities.
But when it comes down to it, risk versus knowledge of risk is about the only thing a user can arm themselves with. At the end of the day, most people are still very unaware of the true risk, and have little to know knowledge of network and systems security that they are incapable of making an informed decision about what to do with wireless access. That's the state of home computing today, like it was the state of the telephone networks back 30, 40 and 50 years ago.
Bottom line: who cares. If you know what you're doing (like Mt Schnieer probaby does) then you do what you want. If you don't, then you read all the articles you can and get really confused when one guy says WPA is a must, and another guy says an open network is just fine. You are confused because you don't understand what is meant by securing your individual systems. - Motodog, on 01/10/2008, -2/+13What a decent guy. His story makes me want to share warm cups of coffee with the homeless!
- Scaster513, on 01/10/2008, -0/+10It will stop the average person, but anyone the determination and a bit of knowledge will have no problem joining your network.
- inactive, on 01/10/2008, -0/+10I don't leave my connection open for the simple fact that my router has no way to prioritize the traffic for me and limit bandwidth usage. If it did, it'd lock their connection down and give them 20k/s or so. That's fast enough for browsing the web and not a big enough chunk to disturb me.
- MrHands, on 01/10/2008, -0/+10I too leave my wifi open, however, I block all ports but 80 on all IPs my computers/consoles don't use. I'll let some stranger browse the web and that's it.
- HonestAbe, on 01/10/2008, -1/+10Anyone know how to set up an encrypted connection for LAN stuff and an unencrypted connection for passers-by (that can only access the web) from the same Wi-Fi router?
- bbhh, on 01/10/2008, -0/+9i agree. i wish we could leave ours open, but we live in an apartment and play online games. at any given time there are 10+ networks in my list with 2 or 3 open, and i love this one open network, because sometimes our router feels like sucking and it is always there for me in a pinch. i'd love to do the same.
- yojiffyskippy, on 01/10/2008, -0/+9What doesn't?
- honus, on 01/10/2008, -1/+10This is a good point if you have the wherewithal to secure your computer lock-tight. If not, I can't say I whole heartedly agree but on a fundamental level I actually really like his approach. I know I've jacked internet from a few open sources, and instead of cycling my POS router at home I'll just leech off the house next door. When it came to wireless security I always just ended up taking the "safer than the neighbor" approach.
- NinjaBoy, on 01/10/2008, -0/+9Selfish
- joejoeself, on 01/10/2008, -4/+12If you are good enough you can hack into the peoples computers who use your connection, best part is that its legal.
- HonestAbe, on 01/10/2008, -0/+8MAC addresses can be spoofed to match devices that are allowed to connect. Easily, I hear.
- inactive, on 01/10/2008, -0/+8(sorry, missed the edit window, but it's relevant comment abuse...)
as an example. At one point, being in between apartments (and thus ISPs) I was "stealing" some open WiFi; unfortunatly, the signal was pretty noisy and I kept getting dropped connections. Using airodump (yeah, i've been known to steal WEP WiFi too....) I could see that virtually every AP was on channel 6. I noticed the SSID was still the default "NETGEAR" so I tried going to 192.168.1.1 and sure enough, logged in with the default "admin:password", and changed their channel to 1; no more dropped connections after that (and I'm sure the owner was pleasantly surprised at the improved signal as well...)
Now, i was being a good little whitehat hacker then, but if I had more nefarious intentions I could have easily locked the *owner* out of their own wireless network (at least, until they realized what might be wrong and did a hard reset). So the moral of the story is: always change the password for your config page (that, and be a nice person and distribute WiFi channels evenly...) - willcode4beer, on 01/10/2008, -1/+9You must buy a lot of lottery tickets.
You really have a much greater chance of winning the lotto than of suffering some fate because your wifi was left open.
You probably have a greater chance of dying on the drive to work each day.
needless paranoia - super_spyder, on 01/10/2008, -0/+8please excuse my ignorance, why would i buy a $400 box couldn't i just use 2 $50 APs 1 AP plugged into another (wan to lan), both distributing dhcp and all that stuff, and have one encrypted, and the other not? so the network is (internet)--(encrypted)--(unencrypted).
- NJank, on 01/10/2008, -0/+7depends on which router you're referring to.
- psyjoniz, on 01/10/2008, -2/+9oh so many reasons not to have an open wifi. no matter what OS you use, there are vulnerabilities into each. the chances of you having the 'right' hacker outside your house stealing your identity? slim. but it happens. using your bandwidth for only yourself? yeah, i like to not have to wait for my neighbor to finish downloading that hot girl on girl before i can get on with my game (or porn, whatever). and how about that hoaky reason 'ppl might use p2p oh noez!'. yeah, well, you know what? that happens too. its already been in the courts. and with how tightly things are going to get locked down moving forward, you will be sure to see it more and more. and yeah, true, i agree, its slim chance of happening - but.. it.. happens!!
really though? i'm glad there are idiots like this out there flooding the wild with easy prey for the hunters. - evilregis, on 01/10/2008, -0/+7I do all my banking and whatnot online. I'm not about to attempt that without some form of encryption set up. I have an SSH server set up on my machine at home so if I am out and about (airport, library, etc.) I can tunnel my traffic through that... so even when I'm connected 'naked', my communications are still protected.
I will be more than happy to set up a separate open connection when it comes time to put in a new router. But my current one doesn't support it and I don't want to take the chance and expose my (nor my wife's) personal information to someone nearby.
As well, I live in a condominium... so at any given time there are many people who could see/connect/sniff my traffic and it's not like I can look outside and see a suspicious vehicle on my curb. I'd probably be far less anal in a less-densely populated area. - NJank, on 01/10/2008, -0/+7or rational...
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