Unencrypted wifi network

Clearly, you didn't read the article, or have no clue what you're talking about. Wifi is broken-by-design here. You currently cannot offer "public wifi" without leaving it unecrypted. The real fix would be to encrypt every connection - even without requiring the user to provide a password, but Wifi wasn't designed that way to begin with, leaving us with a situation where you cannot give someone a public connection without either giving them the password in advance, or allowing them to use it unencrypted.

Its a simple procedure to shell in to your own network at home so all of your traffic on an 'open' wifi connection is encrypted. If people are using the internet, they should take the time to learn how it works.

It shouldnt be illegal based off of peoples ignorance or stupidity. I wouldn't say it's "simple" per-se What should be made clear is that "open Wifi" is indeed designed to be sniffable. It is open in every sense of the word. What would be nice is a new wifi feature where one can provide free wifi access that is encrypted while at the same time requiring no password. This is entirely possible, of course, but no wifi standards have yet been implemented to support this.

There are some grassroots movements to provide a similar system, but providing a specific WPA-encrypted SSID with a certain password that everyone automatically knows - but it hasn't really taken off as far as I can tell.

Intent matters does it? I can see the argument in a situation where you have no choice and where your intent is clear like leaving your clothing in an open cubby at a school gym class - and yes, I did go to a school like this but where you have a simple alternative, like encrypting your network?

Having the state protect us from ourselves by enforcing what we intend is but one small step from having the state decide for us what we should want and then enforcing that. That's somewhere no sane person should want to go except perhaps for the mendacious who believe they will be the rulers who decide. Anonymous Coward , 12 Sep pm.

The law clearly states, finders keepers losers weepers, law section Tim , 6 Apr pm. Colin, in law, intent does matter. The standard common law test of criminal liability is expressed the the Latin pharse, actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea, or "the act is not cupable unless the mind is guilty. An exception to this is in civil law it is not necessary to prove a subjective mental element for a breach of contract or "tort.

It appears that the fact that you need specialized equipment shouldn't be a factor in deciding if it's legal or not. Supposedly if you are in possession of one of these and using it to decode their signals without their permissions, you are breaking some sort of law.

So, in theory, if you can decode the signals without using their own hardware or card system, then you may not be breaking the law Colin Rogers profile , 10 Sep am. You have to crack that code. But as the parent was alluding to - the difference between encoding and encrypting is a VERY fine line. What if the encryption used was ROT13 - would anyone seriously believe that it was encrypted? Would that still make it illegal if everyone knew that it was ROT13 and anyone with 3rd grade comprehension level could decrypt it?

Encoding allows data to be changed from one representational form to another. The format is publicly available. Encryption transforms the data into ciphertext that requires a key to decrypt. The key is not public so the data in the ciphertext is considered secret. ROT13 is a form of encryption, it may well be the weakest form in existence but it is still a form of encryption.

Anyone that actually used ROT13 as their encryption algorithm to protect sensitive data would be guilty of gross incompetence and negligence. I mean, they still ship wifi routers with WEP support, and it has been proven to be a worthless form of encryption. So - where do you draw the line? All encryption has weaknesses, and could eventually be broken, or subverted. If these methods are known, and easy to crack, or rely on relative obscurity such as CSS , can you still call them "encryption" that is worthy of legal protection?

As for satellite signals - it falls into the same realm as CSS, except they're broadcasting it rather than offering a physical device which you purchase and decrypt.

However, in most sat hacking situations, it's usually a use of the hardware and software i. This is where the legality gets sketchy - as you don't necessarily own the device in question to begin with.

You seem to be saying that it's illegal to figure things out. After all that's all an encryption is. It's a code, a puzzle.

How tough does the puzzle encryption have to be to make it illegal? Since using a simple code, converting it to a 'standard set' of ones and zeros is perfectly legal according to this judge.

If I shifted each letter 13 places ROT13 is that 'encrypted' enough? What if I just inverted all the bits? Used XOR? Wrote all my packets in Esperanto? A reporter for a local paper sat on the bleachers of the local high school and accessed an OPEN mount point on the schools file server via an open WiFi network.

He didn't modify any files but he was able to open and read stuff that shouldn't have been publicly available. Then he wrote about it for the paper. The school district's IT department was in a dither about the lack of security but don't know if the City attorney tried to go after this guy.

This was in Palo Alto, the heart of the Silicon Valley. If open WiFi networks aren't wiretapping, then the DA had no case. But that didn't stop them from trying to make one. Use Google Fonts in Word. Customize the Taskbar in Windows What Is svchost. Best Home Theater Systems.

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Why can't open Wi-fi provide encryption? Well is no technically impossible i guess the simple answer is because nobody wants it bad enough plus would be hard to upgrade all existing infrastructure. I think they could easy do something like normal TLS encryption with CA certificates but this could make possible to them sniff in your https traffic which is bad i'm not sure maybe someone can explain this better.

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Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Are open wireless networks unencrypted? Ask Question. Asked 6 years, 8 months ago. Active 6 years, 8 months ago. Viewed 7k times. Improve this question. Without a pre-shared key, how would you know that you're connecting to the real access point, and not a man in the middle?

I realize Wifi AP's don't use signed keys, but OP doesn't know that, and it's feasible that they could. You wouldn't be able to stop man in the middle attacks, but you can still prevent network sniffing by using something as simple as Diffie-Hellman.