Home › Forums › Open Discussion › Van Hacking Into Internet Outside Home
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March 10, 2014 at 12:24 am #610689
wseakellParticipantI was informed by a neighbor that a creepy van was outside our house three separate times this weekend – yesterday at 3 and 4 pm and this morning at 7 am (neighbor has a camera so was able to pin point the times). The neighbor confronted him this morning and he admitted to using internet – specifically, my husband’s and my connection (he called the network by its unique name). Thing is, our network is locked so he had to have hacked into it. The neighbor did call the police but didn’t get a license #.
I’m asking you wonderful people, as someone who knows nothing about hacking, what this means for us. Would he have been able to get into our computers and iProducts and steal passwords (I don’t believe we were on the computers when he was hacking, but probably my phone or iPad a time or two)? Could he have gotten into our cameras and turned them on, now spying on us all the time? (Double creepy!) Can we do anything to ensure he’s not gotten sensitive information? Since he hacked so easily, will changing our password even help? If the techies out there could share anything we should consider that would be greatly appreciated. I’m pretty creeped out and my husband hopes he comes back so he can share some choice words with this creep-o!
March 10, 2014 at 12:53 am #805498
clark5080Participantyou should set it up so only devices you have can use it by using each device’s Mac Address
March 10, 2014 at 1:54 am #805499
SeekingEurosParticipantWhat is a mac address and does a non-apple device have one?
March 10, 2014 at 2:40 am #805500
clark5080ParticipantI don’t have any Mac’s and all my devices have them. We have android phones and windows laptop and a Kindle Fire HD. Each device has it’s own address. No idea as to why it is called a Mac Address.
March 10, 2014 at 4:19 am #805501
snaParticipantJust because someone said they were using your network doesn’t mean he was. Your network name is broadcast (usually) even when it’s locked so it would be easy for him to name them without being able to get in.
March 10, 2014 at 4:32 am #805502
jissyParticipantWhat general area/neighborhood was this?
March 10, 2014 at 4:52 am #805503
dhgParticipantMac stands for media access control and every network chip has one. But restricting your wireless to a few Mac addresses is false security as any hacker can see those macs and parrot them. Instead, use WPA2 as your encryption type and a really good passphrase, I.e. More than 12 characters, upper and lower case, numbers and characters
March 10, 2014 at 5:17 am #805504
clark5080ParticipantDHG I actually use all three of your suggestions on my home network. The password is randomly generated.
March 10, 2014 at 5:17 am #805505
trickycooljParticipantProbably just looking for free wifi and hopefully nothing more sinister. One good reminder we get at work is to make sure not to identify yourselves in your network name so they don’t know what house it’s coming from too easily. Jane and John Doe’s Wifi, it might be easy to find out John Doe works for Microsoft and tempt hackers to try and view sensitive company information. Have fun with your wifi name. Actually in your situation I would rename it “F off creepy red van”
ArsTechnica has a very thorough article about password safety. The longer it is the longer it takes a hacker to brute force entry. Pick 4-5 unrelated words so you have a long string of letters, sometimes adding just one more exponentially increases the number of hours it takes for a computer to calculate your password. WPA2 is a must. If your devices are not WPA2, junk them. Seriously.
http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/08/passwords-under-assault/
And on the humorous side, there is a hilarious web series called The Guild about a group of gamers that play something similar to World of Warcraft. One of the guild members has to live in his van for a while and he parks in neighborhoods to play the game on people’s wifi with hilarious results!
March 10, 2014 at 6:49 am #805506
WSBKeymasterHave to say LOL to Tricky, re: network names.
Because I have to work in a moving car a lot – while we’re heading to breaking news, for example, or if we are going someplace more than a few minutes away and I have to keep working on something until the moment we arrive – I often get to see people’s network names. We have our own mi-fi’s so we would never even try to use somebody else’s, but when I’m connecting to ours and checking it via the pulldown on the Airport icon, there’s usually something funny, something profane, something hostile … So when picking a name, remember that it can be seen by anyone who’s even vaguely in the vicinity, same way you can see your neighbors’ network names … you might recall that’s how it was discovered SPD’s “wireless mesh” was activated even though the cameras supposedly weren’t:
TR
March 10, 2014 at 12:54 pm #805507
FranciParticipantWireless routers also have a setting to prevent the broadcast of your network name. which means any new devices have to have the network name added manually.
March 10, 2014 at 5:46 pm #805508
cjboffoliParticipantThis guy might just be “war driving” to find open networks and use Wi-Fi for free. But it is a bit more sinister if he has used a packet sniffer to break your wireless encryption and access a locked network (which is alarmingly easy to do for someone with the appropriate software and skills). Though there are few prosecutions, this activity is unethical and also illegal in the US.
If he were able to break your wireless encryption he would be able to access Internet traffic via whatever devices were using that network. He probably would not be able to see your screens if you don’t have your computers of iDevices set to sharing or have some kind of Remote Desktop software operating. But he could certainly collect the links for sites you’re visiting as well as the text, photos and HTML as it transits your router. He could also potentially collect your passwords as you log in to certain places. Not only does this compromise your privacy and put you at risk for identity theft, but this person could also use your network for other illegal activity (hacking, fraud, drug activity, child pornography, etc.) that would be traced back to your IP.
Some steps you can take right away:
1. Be sure your router is set to use WPA2 encryption.
2. Change your wireless network name and password immediately. Use as long a password as you can as it will be harder for Wi-Fi password cracking software to break. Include combinations of numbers, capital letters and symbols if you can. Using a series of four or five short, unrelated words with random capital letters and numbers can make for a very effective password while being easier to remember than gibberish. For example:
kettleBarnFrog55#**toast
3. Look into whether your wireless router can be set to only allow the devices that you specify. Many routers will let you use whatever name you’ve assigned to the device and will automatically take note of the MAC address for you.
4. You might also be able to reduce the strength of your wireless signal so that it is not spilling out into the street.
5. Make your router invisible if you can. My Wi-Fi router (an Apple Time Capsule) provides the option to make my network name invisible so that people are not able to see it listed among the networks beaming around the block.
Lastly, do try to get the guy’s license plate so the police can find out who he is.
March 10, 2014 at 7:33 pm #805509
I WonderMemberEasy remedy: Find the check box that won’t broadcast your network name.
March 10, 2014 at 8:07 pm #805510
wseakellParticipantThank you everyone for your comments! The neighborhood is North Shorewood/White Center – 19th & 110th. Your comments are very helpful. Cjboffoli we’ll follow all of your tips, and are going to call Comcast and ensure the police were contacted just in case he was streaming/downloading anything illegal that could be traced back to our IP. We did change our password to something crazy yesterday and renamed our network.
I do hope he was just using our network to play World of Warcraft! :)
March 13, 2014 at 6:36 pm #805511
CostanzaParticipantThe passive-aggressive WiFi network names always give me a good chuckle, and I figure Seattle would be a great place for them…
http://www.methodshop.com/2013/09/passive-agressive-wifi.shtml
March 13, 2014 at 11:23 pm #805512
2 Much WhineParticipantCostanza, that link is awesome! I had to share with friends. Thanks!
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