What would you do?

[Dude]

So I'm sitting in my living room doing a little log checking on my linux lappy (wireless), and notice that my kernel log has a reference to having registerd to active wireless access points. One is obviously mine, the other must have been recently installed by a neighbor. Now normally I'm not one to poke around in other peoples networks without permission, but sometimes that little voice just gets the best of me. After all, his electrons were in my house. I just figured I'd look to see if he had WEP enabled. Well, he dosen't. So I figured I would take a look at his SSID broadcast. Yep, default. OK, no harm no foul. A quick "smbclient -L 192.168.0.1" shows his entire friggin computer set up with completely unsecured shares. To top it all off, he has no password on his router's web configuration interface. Now, my question is, should I be a nice guy and find out who this is so as to educate him on the pitfalls of his current system configuration? Or just let him be stupid.

 

[BobSutan]

My advice is to post an anonymous flyer in a common area advising how to secure one's wireless network, or at least a couple of links that could show him the basics. The second you make yourself known you open yourself up to legal woes, regardless of whether or not they're legally sound. Money spent to defend yourself against a bogus claim is still money spent. Catch my drift?

 

[Dude]

Yes, that's good advice. I don't want to find myself in trouble, especially since my intentions are basically good.

 

[Nybbles]

I'd say it depends on the neighbor.

Personally, I know my neighbor's pretty well since I've lived here like my entire life. They pay me to help them with computers on the side. If one of them ever thought about getting an access point (I'd prob set it up to be honest) and didnt secure it, I'd have no problem going over there to help them secure it.

Maybe I'm just skeptical, but if someone put's an access point in there house without even thinking about security issues, I doubt they're going to be willing to research it a lot, even if you gave them some links.

If you dont get along with them, then screw 'em. However, if you both dont hate each other, I'd be willing to be that most people would be very open to getting some help. Just tell 'em it's "interfering" with your wireless network or something, i dunno.

 

[Boscoh]

I'd cut all their icons off their desktop and paste them into a folder on their desktop, and title the folder "Here are all your desktop icons." Then I'd make a .txt file and put it on their desktop with instructions on how to move them back to the desktop and how to secure their wireless, also letting them know that had you been malicious, you could have deleted all those icons, among other things.

I did that to one of my friends, except I didnt put his shortcuts in a folder on his desktop, I completely moved them off...then I created about 50 .eml (email) files with obscene names...he thought he had Nimda. It was quite funny. He couldnt figure out why everytime he deleted them, they came back. It was because I had them copied and everytime he deleted them and his desktop folder refreshed, I repasted them .