Suspected theft of wireless Broadband

markjbloggs

Hi,

I have Eircom Broadband, supplying a desktop PC and set up wirelessly to 2 laptops, all on XP. Recently one of the laptops has been experiencing a lot of dropped signals - this laptop is usually used in the part of the house closest to a neighbour. Last night, the laptop had been operating flawlessly until the nieghbour came home, then the dropped signal problem started.

Is there another explaination for this behaviour other than theft of the signal?

I use the standard Eircom passworded set-up, with firewall and virus protection. I have noticed that I exceed the download allowance quite a lot, though the meter supplied by Eircom to monitor this in real time does not work.

thank you,
M

Puma5

Yes your neighbour could be hacking your broadband. Best thing to do is change the Eircom broadband password to one of your own. There are programs such as Eircom grabber which allow people hack eircom based on the preset passwords so change it.

Spear

markjbloggs wrote: »

I use the standard Eircom passworded set-up,

http://s4dd.yore.ma/eircom/

That's your Eircom WEP free for the world to see. Change the encryption to WPA with a non-dictionary password now.

jor el

markjbloggs wrote: »

I use the standard Eircom passworded set-up, with firewall and virus protection.

So, no security at all then. Change that immediately, and change to WPA or WPA2 if available.

markjbloggs

So, am I the muppet or is this total incompetence by Eircom?

Spear

markjbloggs wrote: »

So, am I the muppet or is this total incompetence by Eircom?

Not being nasty to you, but both are the case. Eircom made basic mistakes, and you didn't take heed of the major international press coverage or the leaflets Eircom sent you. Still you know better now and it's easily fixed.

Karmafaerie

You should definately change your security, but it does sound more like interferance than someone connecting to your network.
You should change your wireless channel also.

If your neighbour was hacking your network, it wouldn't just slow down one laptop, and it wouldn't cause a problem in only one area of the house.

The neighbour may have come home and turned on their own wireless device that's set to the same channel as yours, so your network is picking up the interference.

syklops

markjbloggs wrote: »

So, am I the muppet or is this total incompetence by Eircom?

No your not a Muppet and yes this is incompetence by Eircom.

I cant believe they have not rectified that issue yet. I wrote an exploit for it years ago.

That aside, I dont think your neighbour is stealing your internet. You said the signal goes low after he comes home. Sounds more like interference to me. If he was connecting to your wifi router, the signal would stay the same, but your speeds would be a bit slower. Even if a 100 people were connecting to the router, the signal would still stay the same.

Many electronic devices use the same or similar frequencies to Wifi. Baby monitors, cordless phones, Microwaves, Car Alarms, etc all use the 2.4Ghz band. My guess would be your neighbor is using a device when he gets home which is causing the interference. Try changing it to a different channel, and see if that helps.

EDIT: Karmafaerie beat me to it! :mad:

markjbloggs

Spear wrote: »

http://s4dd.yore.ma/eircom/

That's your Eircom WEP free for the world to see. Change the encryption to WPA with a non-dictionary password now.

That returns a key that is different to the one I am using.

Just a point - I upgraded to this wireless modem about a year ago, after Eircom did thier press release regarding the security issues. Would it be naieve to expect that they would have corrected the problem before releasing this to me?

What is the procedure for changing channels? Does this change have to be performed on all laptops that use this router?

dlofnep

Most router's will show clients currently connected, including their ip address and mac address. If you have 2 computers on your network, but you see 3 clients connected - you know that somebody else is connected.

Change your encryption to WPA2, and use a 13+ character key (non-dictionary).

Spear

markjbloggs wrote: »

That returns a key that is different to the one I am using.

Just a point - I upgraded to this wireless modem about a year ago, after Eircom did thier press release regarding the security issues. Would it be naieve to expect that they would have corrected the problem before releasing this to me?

What is the procedure for changing channels? Does this change have to be performed on all laptops that use this router?

Eircom changed their method after that went public. But that doesn't mean you should trust Eircom anyway.

Channels need to be changed on the router only normally, the clients should adapt automatically.

Karmafaerie

You just need to change the channel on the router, it's the signal that's been broadcast that you're changing, rather than anything on the laptop.
Also, even though your modem may not be effected by the main Eircom security issue, switching to WPA or WPA 2 would deffinately be preferable.

Myrddin

Karmafaerie wrote: »

but it does sound more like interferance than someone connecting to your network.
You should change your wireless channel also.

The fact that its happening when the neighbour arrives home seems to point to this. If it was hacking, your connection would probably be a lot slower if he was downloading, but it wouldnt be dropping the connection. Log into the router and check its logs to be sure...