Most of us use wireless routers at office and home. While the office routers are generally secured (hopefully), most home routers are provided by broadband operators wih default configurations and passwords. In a worst case it may happen that these are set as unsecured. There is increasing risk of an intruder using an unsecured network or hacking into a home wireless network and sending out malicious mails.
Sometime ago, during the Mumbai terrorsit attacks, it was reported that some of the terrorists had hacked into the wireless network of a home user and sent out mails from the network. In a recent case in the US, a person has been indicteded for hacking into neighbor’s wireless network.
In the reported case, A 45-year-old Blaine man has been indicted in federal court in the District of Minnesota for hacking into his neighbor’s wireless Internet system and allegedly posing as the neighbor to make threats to kill the Vice President of the United States and email child pornography. The indictment charges the person with two counts of aggravated identity theft, one count of making threats to the President and successors to the presidency, one count of unauthorized access to a protected computer, one count of possession of child pornography, and one count of distribution of child pornography.
The indictment alleges that in February of 2009, the person hacked into his neighbor’s wireless Internet connection and created multiple Yahoo.com email accounts in that person’s name. Then, on May 6, 2009, he allegedly used one of those accounts to email the office of the Vice President of the United States to send out threats.
In addition to sending the threatening e-mail described above, the indictment alleges that in February of 2009, the person posed as the identity-theft victim and used the email accounts he created in the victim’s name to send sexually-themed emails to three of the victim’s co-workers. Again, the defendant sent the emails through the victim’s wireless Internet connection, intending for them to be traced to the victim’s Internet account.
More details about the incident can be found at https://www.justice.gov/criminal/cybercrime/ardolfIndict.pdf