Younger Techies << "is this you!!"

[honvetops]

                                                         


SINGAPORE  — A Singaporean teenager who illegally tapped into a neighbor's wireless Internet network — an offense the city-state deems [highlight]punishable by jail[/highlight] — was placed on 18 months' probation by a district court Tuesday.

The court also ordered Garyl Tan Jia Luo, 17, to carry out 80 hours of community service after he admitted linking his computer to his neighbor's wireless router to access the Internet without permission.

Tan could have been jailed up to three years and fined 10,000 Singapore dollars (US$6,500).

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Senior District Judge Bala Reddy cited a probation report as saying Tan had been addicted to Internet gaming at the time of the offense, adding the teenager had "few friends, if not none."

Reddy said [highlight]Tan should seek "disciplined and structured psychiatric and psychological intervention" to cure his addiction[/highlight].  LOL!!!!

Tan is the first Singaporean to have been prosecuted and convicted for tapping illegally into a wireless Internet network, an offense under the Computer Misuse Act, according to Tan's lawyer, Sam Koh.

A second Singaporean is currently facing 60 charges of illegally accessing wireless Internet networks.

[Calum]

LOL.
Reading the title, I expected it to be about something like the lower age of IT technicians.
Which would be me (hopefully).
I'm not really like the guy in the post, I'm not addicted.
I just really like games.
Not addicted.
Really.

[patio]

His neighbor should do time for not locking down his wireless signal....

[Calum]

That's a good idea.
Although really, most people just follow the wizard to set it up, which all to often doesn't include setting up security.
Or they get a friend to do it, who doesn't set up security often because it's too complicated, or they think it'll be too complicated for the owner, or for some other reason.
So whilst I do agree that people should lock down their networks, it's also the company which makes the equipment's fault if they don't provide an easy way to enable it for average Joe.

[2k_dummy]

You can take many security precautions, but you CANNOT lock down the wireless signal. Someone with the know-how can still get in.

[Calum]

You're right.
Lock down may not be the right phrase.
But whilst you cannot entirely lock down a wireless network, you can make it very hard to get in.
So then people would have to be very knowledgeable and have a lot of time on their hands to get in.
And then hopefully they'd move on to an easier target, like the one next door with no encryption.

[Windows98]

I was just stumbling and googling some random stuff, there are software out there that detects and tries to crack WEP key addresses. I didnt download one I am alergic to viruses.

As for the router if they obtain your IP address they can slowly try to break in I guess. My router has remote access: It is the current IP address and port 2xxx I think I havent look and I havent enable it. after that you need a user name and password if you put one in.

I wonder is MAC address filter safer then WEP and WPA

[2k_dummy]

WPA is stronger encryption than WEP. Use MAC address filtering in addition to encryption to add and extra layer of security. Also limit the IP range. Why have 100 IP addresses available when you only have 2 or 3 (or whatever) systems that need access.