Watching a hacker?


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I do want to prove it's them yes, they are the only house within range to get the network and to pull this much data.


We're planning to go to the local police.
 
For 150? is it worth the trouble?


But I mean, you can't "prove" concretely, without logs from back then. All you can do is gather usage patterns now, which can 'imply' but is not 'proof'; it fully depends on the small claims judge then. (Theres no lawyers or business involved, since the $$ amount is pretty small.)


Really, what you should do is..


1) Get the list of connecting MAC's from the router (when they were on it, or still on it)


2) Get a list of MACs for all devices in the house (phones, laptops, pandoras, NDS's, PSP, whatever.)


--> just yto amke sure your phones aren't going rogue and you going after the wrong person


--> and if you take full catalog of devices, and no match, thats pretty good proof _someone else_ was doing something


3) Can you then map the MAC back to neighbours house, to point it to them? MAC sniffer ought to do it..


Theres no snooping there on your part, just some basic sleuthing to say 'yeup, its these guys on'.


Buty theres no way to proof fully they were doing the deed back in time.


(ie: they coudl just argue someone was in a car leaching por somethign, how are you to say it was them specifically?)


--


Hell, at my place something similar happened.. my neighbour had a strong signal, stronger than the signal from my own router. (This was old equipment, 10 years ago). My wifes laptop would always connect to strongest signal (win XP, SP1 days probably) .. there was no way we could keep that laptop pointing to our own network if we tried; it was only by chance we noticed this behaviour .. it was all good, then one day neighbour got new router and my wifes laptop silently jumped to that onre and we didn't notice until days later when their network was down but ours was up, and my wife asked wtf was going on...


Theres a lot ogf stuff that can happen.


So for me, I'd go knock on their foor, say 'wtf, you guys cost us $x in bills last month, can you kick us some dosh'. If they do, great. If not .. is $x worth it?


I mean, if its $1000 sure .. but if its $150 .. is it worth it? Permanently souring the neighbour relationship so they break windows and throw egggs whenever they can?


*shrug*


jeff
 
But they are running up hundreds of gigs of bandwidth a week, not just checking facebook.


This isn't some accident, this is criminal, targeted, activity. The police are interested, my initial evidence will just be the start.
 
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Why are you wasting so much time on this?


Just use WPA and set a password.
 
You might think it's wasting time to go after people who run up hundreds of pounds on your grandparents internet bill, but I don't.
So instead, you're going to leave it open and let them keep doing it...
 
Sounds like they're just BitTorrenting movies or some other such nonsense. If so, you should be able to determine what they're downloading from the ( usually HTTP ) download of the original .torrent file.


Can you give us any specifics on the make/model of the router?
 
First change the SSID and change the loginname and password: most of them are stock like admin, password or user, user


Do al this things while youre connected with a cable and without internet connect to the router


You can try to setup the router to use mac adress filtering/blocking.


Also use static ip adresses and change the gateway adress of the router.


Also setup the router to hide his SSID so it's not easy to find
 
I mean, if its $1000 sure .. but if its $150 .. is it worth it? Permanently souring the neighbour relationship so they break windows and throw egggs whenever they can?

if you got repeated wifi-hacking, internet-stealing neighbours that then break your windows when you file a complaint you're left with just a few choices.


move,


fight them using the legal system (will take a long time and lots of window replacements),


fight them without using the legal system... dunno if granny has a few low-riders tattooed large friends :D


kidding aside I'd first get some proofs, then try talking to them (if it hasn't been tried already) to see if I'm looking at a nasty fight or just the family's teen being a teen and if they are reasonable.


if there's nobody else in range, they probably know who they're stealing from so no point in trying to stay anonymous.


Edit: wait, was the Wifi encrypted or left plain open ? the part about "they even changed the router password" got me confused.
 
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Once you have evidence, you can try confronting them and asking for an "out of court settlement" first. Many people would rather pay a fee than have a criminal record on the books against them.
 
I'm so glad we have flat fees in the Netherlands :)


/me connects to one of 4 neighboring Thomson/SpeedTouch routers again
 
I mean, if its $1000 sure .. but if its $150 .. is it worth it? Permanently souring the neighbour relationship so they break windows and throw egggs whenever they can?


Edit: wait, was the Wifi encrypted or left plain open ? the part about "they even changed the router password" got me confused.


The password to change settings in the router. So there was probably no password to connect to the router and the password to get to the router settings was still username: admin password : admin


Maybe they needed some ports opened for gaming or torrents. Like making sure they're ratio is OK and they are connectable.
 
Regardless of the legalities of Craigix deciding he'd like to gather a little evidence of their activities as proof, or if the router was wide open to exploit, it still strikes me as theft, as physical loss of property (his Grandparents cash) is occurring, due to their data use.


In addition it maybe wise to gather evidence of exactly what they are using it for, not just to bolster the case that they are stealing the connection in order to confront them, or hand to the police to pursue it but what if they are involved in something really nasty like child porn, terrorism (I jest) etc?


At that point it would be wise to not confront them but hand the evidence over to the correct investigatory group to continue monitoring its activities unaware and perhaps snag bigger fish in the chain that maybe involved. I think Craig is making the correct choice here, even if it proves innocent enough, to merely merit confronting them and getting some financial recourse and promises to stop doing it, as its bang out of order in the first place.
 
Just add MAC filtering on your router for which units can connect, then they won't even be able to connect
 
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MAC addresses are easy to detect and spoof. It would stop anyone with any determination all of about 10 seconds to get back on.
 
WireShark is the best software for packet analasis. You can discover everything they are doing, including their password ect...


It is even available on the Pandora in Angstrom repo (but doesn't work well for now :rolleyes: )
 
>hacker


By the sounds of it, it's just your silly grandparents leaving the network unprotected without a password.


Just change your router settings and get a decent firewall.
 
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