Re: [PLUG] Verizon FIOS & open wireles

["Brian Stempin" <brian.stempin@gmail.com>]

I would think so.

The day-to-day probability of such an event is pretty low, but the cost of such an event probably outweighs the pain of shoring-up your wireless connection.  As I said earlier in the thread, I would have gone this route to keep myself anonymous as a 
highschooler.  This would lead me to believe that many (young) people would realize this.

Case and point:  Delaware County Comm. College had a bomb threat emailed to them a couple of months ago.  The perp used an open wireless AP that was owned by another educational entity.  (a) They never found the guy, (b) they never will, and (c) what do you think would happen if such activity were traced back to 
your ip address?

Having said that, I also want to note that this is not reason to be paranoid.  Securing your WAP is kind of like trying to outrun a bear:  the goal should not be to outrun the bear, but to outrun the other people that you're with.  Last time I checked, greater than 75% of all residential WAPs had no security, which leads me to believe that 
any security is probably enough to make use of a secured WAP too much of a time investment for any given attacker.  Why crack yours when s/he can just drive an extra 100 ft and get through a completely open connection?

On 10/2/07, Marc Zucchelli <marcz908@yahoo.com> wrote:

I have never really worried about people abusing my internet connection.  MOST people would be completely harmless, and the ones that are dangerous have to come within a close range to my house.  Is this really THAT serious of an issue?

jeff <jeffv@op.net> wrote:

gabriel rosenkoetter wrote:
> I don't understand when it became a bad idea to share ones Internet
> connection on purpose.

My guess would be when it became popular to hijack/hack connections.


> Being open (and neighborly) is not mutually exclusive with keeping
> your own systems secure.

if this were the 50's (yes, my wireless has tubes), I'd be right there
with you. Unfortunately I'm kinda stuck with the belief that if you
leave a door open, people will start coming through it (in a bad way).

There might be an undocumented hole in my setup. I might have forgotten
to patch something. Imo, there are too many negative types about even
to allow cordoned off access. Mind you, if my neighbor needed it, I'd
find a way.



P.S. with one of the aftermarket wireless OSes (dd-wrt, et al), you can
allegedly jack up the output of your wireless.
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