Baffle WiFi Leeches With An Upside-Down-Ternet

By on Oct 7, 2008 · 69 Comments 

upside_down.png

Have you ever had someone leach off your Wi Fi? You could always encrypt it or use any multitude of tricks to hide your network, but why would you do that when you can have some serious fun with them. Blur their images, or flip them upside down to get them really scratching their heads.

Essentially what you need to split up your net block so that you have a trusted block and an untrusted one. That coupled along with a few snippets of code will lead you to a wealth of possibilities. Imagine all the fun you could have with those neighbors who decide not to pay for their own access and ride the carpet on your hard earned dollars. Plus, it’s a whole lot of fun.

[Link to Upside-Down-Ternet]

Frank's the editor in chief of tech.nocr.at. He can be found surfing the internet and playing with gadgets. Follow him on twitter @franklinhares

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  • nothanks

    Picture this: somebody wants a piece of your cake. The box it came in had a note saying “help yourself” which you did not remove. You’re not around, but they see this and assume it’s ok and have a slice. Have they done anything wrong? No, obviously not.

    That’s essentially whats happening here: somebody comes along and tries to use your wifi. Their computer asks your router to allow it access to your wifi. Your router responds, on your behalf, that they have permission to connect.

    Have they done anything wrong? If you have left it set up to allow connections by default, then you are allowing connections!

    Wifi hackers are another matter, obviously…

    Reply – Quote
    • yesplease

      picture this: you have left your car unlocked for the night as you go to bed, some guy comes along and sees your car is unlocked, he breaks in and steals your shit. have they done anything wrong? no, obviously not.

      people who break windows to get into cars are another matter, obviously…

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      • shredthegnarbrah

        Picture this: you have left your car in your driveway with your trusty robot that hands anyone who walks up, the keys to your car. Some dude comes up and drives your car around for an hour, comes to enjoy it, and keeps coming back all the time. This is frustrating because you need your car sometimes, right? It's also frustrating because he doesn't ever fill up the tank! But this would be avoided if you would just get rid of the robot and carry your keys like a normal person.

        Is yesplease a mac user?

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    • Jonathan

      Does failure to lock my bike imply permission to take it without my permission?

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  • thats stupid

    @nothanks – That’s stupid. Is it alright for people off the street to come into my house because they see the doors open? No. The same thought applies to wifi.

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  • That’s really stupid

    @thats stupid – That’s not exactly a correct analogy. When you connect to someone else’s unprotected wifi you’re not going into someone else’s house. In reality, you’re using something that was put through your walls into your house. Something a little closer to reality would be: I go into your house and leave a cake on the table. You eat a slice of the cake.

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  • joulesbeef

    How about you keep your damn wifi off my property.. if you feel like that.
    make your sidd keep out.. but drop the attitude cause your infiltrating my house with wifi waves and we can easily make a law.. saying keep your EM waves on your own damn property.

    If you sit their and let your hose drain onto my property you have no business complaining when i use the water.

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  • Ryan

    Can anyone translate this to english? Us mortals can’t just snap our fingers and split a network.

    :\

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    • El Kabong

      He's doing it in Linux. You could also be using Linux. And stop being mortal.

      Seriously though, I imagine the same can be done in Win. Just edit the equivalent file the same way. Maybe slight syntax differences. I don't know. I'm in Linux. Yet, still mortal.

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  • Brandon

    @nothanks: I don’t mind if you have a nice slice, but if you barely leave me any cake, beware the consequences.

    Setting this up after X number of pages might work.

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  • http://HunterShoptaw.com Hunter

    I think a correct analogy for this would be if you left your radio on in your house (which btw you are doing with your wifi)and I listened to it in my house. Nuf said.

    Brandon has a point though, eat my cake, but you damn well better leave me plenty. I’ve been known to leech a wifi before, and thus left mine open (with an encrypted network) for internet use, but there is definitely an etiquette to it. You don’t do high bandwidth apps on someone else’s network unless you’re personally invited to. checking your email, pulling down an youtube vid, cruising the internet – all cool as long as you do it safely and courteously.

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    • Guest1

      I had an open connection, but my neighbour's kids got carried away with it and began to download music like crazy onto their ipods, with my fairly slow connection. I couldn't even use my own net connection, I was lagging too bad. Had to password protect it.

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  • http://www.fukoff.com fukoff

    you all are stupid and should fukoff lol

    Reply – Quote
    • No, I won't

      Wow. I wish I was cool and knew a bunch of expletives. That would prove I'm really mature and cool and stuff.

      Reply – Quote

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  • rob

    @joulesbeef – LMFAO wow that is funny sh*t but also, VERY TRUE!!!

    Reply – Quote
  • tmayton

    @joulesbeef –

    Agreed. At the very least, it’s rude to broadcast an ID to people you don’t want accessing the network. With most of these private networks that exclusively use the same set of computers, they need to stop broadcasting ID’s and tell the routers to limit access based on the MACs along with a wpa2 key. That’s a pretty polite way of saying keep out. After that, yeah, someones obvious acting in a hostile manner if trying to access the network. Mindgames are justified at that point.

    [WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The poster sent us ’0 which is not a hashcash value.

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  • Scott

    You people are retarded…

    “If you sit their and let your hose drain onto my property you have no business complaining when i use the water.”

    If I leave my hose on, and it leaks into your yard, feel free to use the water. However, dont send anything back through the water to my property. That IS how wireless works, its a two way street.

    “How about you keep your damn wifi off my property..”

    How about you tell those planes to stop flying over, too. Or keep the smoke from your grill out of my air. Or the noise from that lawnmower off my property…

    “cause your infiltrating my house with wifi waves and we can easily make a law..”

    So is Verizon Wireless, Sprint, the local radio stations, etc etc etc…let me know how it works out when you tell them to “keep off your property”.

    I could go on and on…

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  • Mike

    I had a guy who stole my cable TV by putting a splitter on it underground and it wasn’t until the cable company noticed it, but he never got punished. My point to all of these commenters is this: if you have something in your yard, such as Christmas decorations, plants, a grill, your kids bike; none of them are locked down. Since they aren’t secured with a lock and key, does that mean it’s okay to take and/or use them at your discretion? Of course not. Not until you have explicit permission from the owner of those items you wish to use, should you feel comfortable or allowed to do so. This includes WiFi, and anything else. It’s a shame that we have to protect our own WiFi from pathetic neighbors who wish to steal it. Want WiFi? get your own. I did. Is it open? No. Should I be able to leave it open? Yes. BUT, this is America. Full of thieves, and lowlifes who feel that everything anyone else has should be theirs also– and for free at that. Part of the unemployment problem and welfare issues facing us today. They all want it for themselves, but don’t feel as though they should have to work for it. Get a job, get your own.

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    • Wenger

      Exactly.

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    • http://profiles.google.com/thefirstkitten Skyler Gray

      If they put it in my yard, I WILL use it. And if you come over and accuse me of stealing, all because YOU put it in MY yard, I’m gonna knock your lights and call the police. Keep your wifi on your lawn, and I won’t touch it.

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      • Dzylon

        It really is sad how you justify stealing WiFi. You talk as if you are just the innocent bystander, and the person who you are leeching off of is to blame. You act as if it is the fault of the person who (isn’t a lazy fuck) pays for their own internet until they take steps to prevent it. You act like the person who owns the router and pays for the service DOESN’T HAVE THE RIGHT to turn all the images THEY ARE PAYING FOR upside down. If I wanted to leave the network open, but send all the people who access it to bluewaffle, that is my right and the use of that right is at my discrepancy.

        Also, my router is not on your property. WiFi networks simply tend to go a little farther than they’re supposed to. You use the same logic as the neighbor everyone hates who cuts down limbs from other trees that stretch into your yard. Where’s your analogy for that?

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        • http://profiles.google.com/thefirstkitten Skyler Gray

          I pay for my own internet. I let my neighbors use it. I simply was saying that if you don’t want others to use it, you shouldn’t make it so easy as to give it to them. That is my belief and one that is shared by many others because it is reasonable.

          As for that analogy, if you build a swimming pool in your backyard, and the water just happens to go over a little more than intended, that is now my water. Now you could out chlorine in it if you don’t want people using it. Chlorine = password. Water = data
          Pool =router. Just in case you didn’t get it.

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  • http://xkcd.com Nok

    Can someone link us mortals to a “How-To” please? I’ve never split a network before…

    Reply – Quote
  • Sean Thmas

    Technically an open wifi signal is trespassing onto the neighbor’s property….

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    • Chuck

      Technically, it’s not. I don’t know how you came to that conclusion…are radio waves trespassing on everyone’s property?

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      • technically thats the law

        he came by that conclusion because its the same one our lawmakers came to (in the USA)… and they passed laws to reflect that…

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  • b

    what? i didnt realize that my neighbor owned the airspace around their house? LOL I guess if i fart and it sneaks into their backyard thats also trespassing?

    Originally Posted By Sean ThmasTechnically an open wifi signal is trespassing onto the neighbor’s property….

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    • http://intensedebate.com/people/kylemancuso kylemancuso

      hahaha @b. that's freaking hilarious!

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  • Not real name

    @nothanks – Picture this: somebody wants a piece of your cake. The box it came in had a note saying “help yourself” which you did not remove. You’re not around, but they see this and assume it’s ok and put some child porn on it. Have they done anything wrong? Yes, obviously not.

    That’s essentially whats happening here: somebody comes along and tries to use your wifi. Their computer asks your router to allow it access to your wifi. Your router responds, on your behalf, that they have permission to connect. Then they download CP and you get in trouble with the FBI.

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  • bob

    Look at all the pissed off cheap bastards on here complaining.

    Buy your own internet cheapskates.

    Reply – Quote
  • bob

    @Scott Finally, a bit of intelligence leaks it’s way into the conversation.

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  • InternetBroken?

    Personally, I have my own wifi and don't really need yours, but wouldn't feel the least bit bad about leaching a little bandwidth from your unsecured network if something were to happen to my home network, especially because everyone in the neighborhood is using the same ISP and shares bandwidth anyway. I'm going to assume you're doing the same, as aside from some port forwarding and firewall disabling, I've more or less left my router in factory setup, as it's the only way to get our two xbox's to connect to the internet, and since we run xp sp1 and vista I can have either wep or wpa encryption, but wind up fielding complaints from computer illiterates about whoever's laptop just quit connecting to the internet each time I try to password protect or disable SSID broadcasting. I promise not to run over your constantly screaming children on my way to work, or throw my cigarette butts on your lawn as long as I can leave uTorrent on overnight and have my shows ready by the time I get home.

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  • http://twitter.com/troop1028 @troop1028

    The moral of the story is, just like Dad use to say, nothing in life is free, go get a job and pay for access, ya bum!

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  • p. jaxon

    How do I change the damn password on my Belkin wireless? I 'lent' it to my new neighbor until they got hooked up and they decided not to get hooked up when they could just keep using mine and I've searched the help section for days now and can't do something so simple as that. OK, that's pathetic but I'm a relative amateur and unless I can find an instruction I'm stuck.

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  • p. jaxon

    How do I change the damn password on my Belkin wireless? I 'lent' it to my new neighbor until they got hooked up and they decided not to get hooked up when they could just keep using mine and I've searched the help section for days now and can't do something so simple as that. OK, that's pathetic but I'm a relative amateur and unless I can find an instruction I'm stuck.

    Reply – Quote
  • johnm

    I don't get people who won't let folks use their wifi signal. My network is wide open (from the modem to wireless router anyways, not to our personal computers) and several of my neighbors use it from time to time. They all have their own internet services, so I'm guessing they connect automatically at times, or they purposefully connect when they get a better signal from me then from their own system (I've got decent antennas set up to network several houses down to the house with the router). I purposefully left access control and encryption off because i don't care if people want to use my stuff. I log everything anyways, and if someone becomes a problem I'll cut them off. If a neighbor/passer by has actual malicious intentions, there's far more concerning vulnerabilities than my wifi, and if they aren't malicious, then I don't care if they use it anyways.

    I help myself to folks connections when I go for walks and need to access something, and if others want to do the same, even from within their house, I am fine with it. They don't have the right to demand this of me, but I'd think the position that its mind and you can't have any (just cuz its mine and …. well, they might do something bad!) is stupid. Its selfish. As for those who control access for other reasons, cost for example, I'd share their position, but I never did get the security issue. I log the access, and I'm not responsible for others' use anyways (nor are the other millions who leave their wifi open) beyond the fee I pay my provider, and someone who wanted to cause me trouble could key my car, break my windows, bleach my lawn, burglarize my house, or any number of things that I'd prefer much less.

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    • Ian

      @johnm – That’s all fine and dandy until someone dowloads kiddy porn via your wireless and suddenly you’re house is being raided by federal police.

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  • ninjabuddy

    none of these make it less amusing. if they find it a real problem they can get their own damn connection.

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  • Anon

    Ignorance is innocence! Curiosity is Sin! Wikipedia corrupts minors! Support willful ignorance! Censor Inspiration! Sharing is Stealing! Outlaw p2p!

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  • Starr

    Truth of the matter is, if my neighbor’s wi-fi signal is seeping into MY apartment… I push the wifi button on my laptop, it connects to said neighbor’s signal… That’s fair game! If you’re not smart enough to secure your connection, and it’s EASY AS PIE to use your unsecure connection, that’s not my fault!

    AND, if you even have the slightest hint that someone is using your connection, or even WILL be using your connection for illegal things, secure your network! DUH.

    Either these people do not care that their bandwidth is being leeched, or they were dumb enough to set up a network without having the intelligence, or researching how to set it up securely!

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  • Jack Thompson

    Wifi is not like a grill in your yard. The thing is I dont have to go to your yard to get your wifi. Your wifi is coming in my house. My wifi card ASKS your router for permission to connect, which YOUR router gives permission for. Your router unlike a bike or a grill laying in your yard, can allow or deny access. my wifi card asks, and your router says yes. If you dont want your router being a slut, put security on it. A better analogy is this:

    Your daughter comes over to my house. My son asks your daughter if she would like to shag. Your daughter agrees. They knock boots. all night long. You get mad. You tell my son that he shouldn't have done the nasty with your daughter and accuse him of rape. But we all know your daughter consented, because she is like the village bicycle.

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    • pwned

      If you’re willing to connect to a router controlled by me, by all means, do so. Bwahahaha. You better be using SSL the whole way, and use only the 15% of sites that have good SSL methods.

      That wasn’t my daughter, that was my pet incubus. pwned 6 ways to sunday.

      Reply – Quote
    • jack thompsons dad

      yeah youre basically a cunt with shit analogies.

      Reply – Quote

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  • Thanxfornotsharing

    "Hoho how smart we are! Here, take a bunch of code (But we won't tell you what the hell you gotta do with it). See our pics? All upside-down!"

    They must be trolling…

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  • Lefty’s a righty!

    so what do ya’ll think of dld-ing movies n songs w/o payin? stealing also? or “hey its on my yard i’ll take it, just like the poop ur dog left on my lawn!” ROTFL! 

    ignite!

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