OT: unathorized network user.

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Tue, 22 Jan 2008, Jimmy Bradley wrote:

>        I live in an apartment complex, and I have a wireless network
> that most of the time, I run encrypted. For some reason, in order for my
> Linux machines to see my one remaining windows machine, I have to turn
> off the encryption. Not long after I turn the encryption off, there is
> some one who lives near me, whose machine gets on my network.
>         Now,get this, apparently the machine is setup to share the whole
> hard drive,because I can see all the folders on the hard drive. By the
> way, it's an 80gig hard drive. I have written and saved text files to
> the machine's desktop, asking the person to stay off my network, but
> they continue to get on my network. The last text message I saved to the
> person's desktop was a message saying that they have ignored all my
> warnings, so they leave me no choice but to fill up their hard drive.
> So far, I have filled their hard drive about halfway up, and they still
> get on my network. I haven't saved any malicious files to their machine.
> It's mostly been Linux distro iso's and video(no porn)and audio files
> that I know they won't like. Just nice big files.
>         This person has to be clueless as to what is going on. You'd
> think they would've noticed something by now.
>         My question is, does anyone have any other ideas as to handle
> this problem? I mean, I don't want to fill this person's hard drive up,
> but if I have to, I will.

surely you can configure your WAP to prevent this.  most WAPs will
allow you to limit the number of IP addresses given out, or let you
filter on the MAC address.  it's not hard.

rday

p.s.  you're leaving yourself open to serious repercussions if you
continue to do what you're doing.  in the first place, the other party
could potentially sue you for malicious mischief or something like
that if you fill up their HD to the point where their system stops
working.  they could conceivably charge you with hacking, and the fact
that they were using *your* WAP might not be a defense for you.

second, if *their* machine gets infected with a virus and begins to
disseminate spam, your ISP might cancel *your* access.  check your
contract -- a lot of ISPs have a clause that states that *you* are
responsible for securing your systems and if you get infected and
become a source of spam, they have every right to cancel your service.
the fact that that spam is coming from elsewhere doesn't matter --
it's coming out of *your* account through *your* WAP, and that's all
that matters.

and, finally, if i was the other party and was feeling particularly
malicious and wanted to get even, i might download illegal porn and
put it on my own computer, then report it with your own admission that
you've been storing content on that machine and claim that it came
from *you*.  and life would get ugly for you in a hurry.

bottom line:  you're wasting your time trying to play nice.  figure
out how to secure your systems properly.

rday
-- 

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Robert P. J. Day
Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry
Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA

Home page:                                         http://crashcourse.ca
Fedora Cookbook:    http://crashcourse.ca/wiki/index.php/Fedora_Cookbook
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