Page 1 of 1

WiFi Hacking == goto Jail

PostPosted: Thu Nov 06, 2003 6:44 am
by audit
N.C. Man First In Nation Convicted Of Wireless Crime

http://www.channel3000.com/technology/2613265/detail.html

N.C. Man First In Nation Convicted Of Wireless Crime
Man Pleads Guilty To Hacking Into Patient Files

POSTED: 11:01 a.m. EST November 5, 2003
RALEIGH, N.C. -- Wireless Internet is becoming more and more popular, and with it come new ways for criminals to take advantage of others.

The first conviction in the nation for wireless cyber crimes came down in North Carolina Tuesday.

Clayton Dillard, 29, of Holly Springs, pleaded guilty to hacking into patient records at Wake Internal Medicine Consultants.

Dillard said he broke the law to prove a point that confidential medical records are vulnerable to computer hackers.

Police said Dillard crossed the line by hacking into more than 2,000 patient files.

"No matter what your intentions are, there is a point that experiment and research stops and criminal activities start," said Patrick Nieman of the Raleigh Police Department.

Police said Dillard used a laptop to break into computers. They said Dillard's guilty plea marks the first time anyone in the United States has been convicted of the crime.

"Moral relativism has no place in this. He violated the law," Nieman said.

On Sept. 9, Wake Internal Medicine Executive Director Steve Lauhoff told WRAL-TV the network is now protected.

"We made the correction and our network, I can say with confidence, is to the highest industry standard right now."

Dillard was sentenced to 18 months probation and ordered to pay $10,000 in fines.

Waterford men hacked store files, FBI alleges

PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2003 7:51 pm
by audit
http://www.freep.com/news/locoak/nhack11_20031111.htm

Waterford men hacked store files, FBI alleges
BY DAVID ASHENFELTER
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

November 11, 2003



Two young men sitting in a car in the parking lot of a Lowe's home improvement store in Southfield repeatedly hacked into the company's national computer network over the past two weeks, gaining access to credit card numbers and other information, federal prosecutors said Monday.

It's unclear what the two men planned to do with the information.

They may have been engaged in the recent hacker craze known as "wardriving" -- cruising around with a specially equipped laptop and an antenna searching for unsecured wireless networks hooked to the Internet. Assistant U.S. Attorney Karen Reynolds said the investigation is under way.

Paul Timmins, 22, and Adam Botbyl, 20, both of Waterford, didn't explain what they were up to when they appeared Monday in U.S. District Court. Magistrate Virginia Morgan told them anything they said could be used against them in court.

Timmins said he is a $38,000-a-year computer network and security specialist for a Southfield software company. Botbyl said he's a student at ITT Technical Institute in Troy. Morgan released both men on $10,000 unsecured bonds.

FBI agent Denise Stemen said in an affidavit that Lowe's alerted the FBI recently that intruders had broken into its computer at company headquarters in North Carolina, altered its computer programs and illegally intercepted credit card transactions.

Stemen said the company's computer system had been hacked repeatedly from Oct. 25 through Nov. 7. She said that the intruders gained access through the national network by logging onto a user account over the wireless network of the Lowe's store in Southfield.

Once in the system, the intruders gained access to Lowe's stores in six states plus the headquarters system, Stemen said.

She said hackers altered the software Lowe's uses to process credit card purchases nationwide. On Nov. 5, the hackers installed a malicious program that disabled several computers at the Long Beach, Calif., store, she said.

Lowe's spokeswoman Chris Ahearn said the company has taken steps to beef up security, but wouldn't elaborate.

In alerting the FBI, Lowe's security said the intruders probably were operating within 1,000 feet of the Southfield store.

FBI agents set up surveillance Friday night and said they spotted the two men sitting with laptops in a Pontiac Grand Prix equipped with antennae. Agents followed the men and apparently arrested them Saturday. Agents also searched their apartments in Waterford.

During their court appearance Monday, Morgan ordered both men not to use computer equipment or access the Internet except at work or school.

The men are charged with causing damage to a protected computer system, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, upon conviction. Reynolds told Morgan that the men, who were arrested on a criminal complaint, are likely to be indicted within a few weeks in Michigan or Charlotte, N.C.

"Wardriving" is named after the old hacker practice called wardialing, the stunt that actor Matthew Broderick made famous in the 1983 film "WarGames." Broderick's character hacked into a military computer and nearly triggered a nuclear war with Russia.



Contact DAVID ASHENFELTER at 313-223-4490.

Lowe's Dumbass's plead guilty

PostPosted: Fri Jun 04, 2004 12:53 pm
by renderman
http://www.securityfocus.com/news/8835

By Kevin Poulsen, SecurityFocus Jun 4 2004 1:04PM


In a rare wireless hacking conviction, a Michigan man entered a guilty plea Friday in federal court in Charlotte, North Carolina for his role in a scheme to steal credit card numbers from the Lowe's chain of home improvement stores by taking advantage of an unsecured wi-fi network at a store in suburban Detroit.

Brian Salcedo, 21, faces an a unusually harsh 12 to 15 year prison term under federal sentencing guidelines, based largely on a stipulation that the potential losses in the scheme exceeded $2.5 million. But Salcedo has agreed to cooperate with the government in the prosecution of one or more other suspects, making him eligible for a sentence below the guideline range.

One of Salcedo's two codefendants, 20-year-old Adam Botbyl, is scheduled to plead guilty Monday, assistant U.S. attorney Matthew Martins confirmed. Botbyl faces 41 to 51 months in prison, but also has a cooperation deal with the prosecutors, according to court filings. The remaining defendant, 23-year-old Paul Timmins, is scheduled for arraignment on June 28th.

In 2000, as a juvenile, Salcedo was one of the first to be charged under Michigan's state computer crime law, for allegedly hacking a local ISP.

According to statements provided by Timmins and Botbyl following their arrest, as recounted in an FBI affidavit filed in the case, the pair first stumbled across an unsecured wireless network at the Southfield, Michigan Lowe's last spring, while "driving around with laptop computers looking for wireless Internet connections," i.e., wardriving. The two said they did nothing malicious with the network at that time.

It was six months later that Botbyl and his friend Salcedo hatched a plan to use the network to steal credit card numbers from the hardware chain, according to the affidavit.

FBI Stakeout
The hackers used the wireless network to route through Lowe's corporate data center in North Carolina and connect to the local networks at stores in Kansas, North Carolina, Kentucky, South Dakota, Florida, and two stores in California. At two of the stores -- in Long Beach, California and Gainseville, Florida -- they modified a proprietary piece of software called "tcpcredit" that Lowe's uses to process credit card transactions, building in a virtual wiretap that would store customer's credit card numbers where the hackers could retrieve them later.

At some point, Lowe's network administrators and security personnel detected and began monitoring the intrusions, and called in the FBI. In November, a Bureau surveillance team staked out the Southfield Lowe's parking lot, and spotted a white Grand Prix with suspicious antennas and two young men sitting inside, one of them typing on a laptop from the passenger seat, according to court documents. The car was registered to Botbyl.

After 20 minutes, the pair quit for the night, and the FBI followed them to a Little Ceasar's pizza restaurant, then to a local multiplex. While the hackers took in a film, Lowe's network security team poured over log files and found the bugged program, which had collected only six credit card numbers.

FBI agents initially identified Timmins as Botbyl's as the passenger in the car, apparently mistakenly, and both men were arrested on November 10th. Under questioning, Botbyl and Timmins pointed the finger at Salcedo. Timmins had allegedly provided the two hackers with an 802.11b card, and had knowledge of what his associates were up to.

Botbyl and Timmins, known online as "noweb4u" and "itszer0" respectively, are part of the Michigan 2600 hacker scene -- an informal collection of technology aficionados.

The Lowe's wi-fi system was installed to allow scanners and telephones to connect to the store's network without the burden of cables, according to the indictment.

Wi-fi hopper guilty of cyber-extortion

PostPosted: Tue Jun 29, 2004 6:24 am
by Thorn
http://www.securityfocus.com/news/8991


SECURITYFOCUS NEWS

Wi-fi hopper guilty of cyber-extortion

By Kevin Poulsen, SecurityFocus Jun 25 2004 4:57PM


A Maryland man with a grudge against a Connecticut-based patent firm used unsecured wireless networks at homes and businesses in the Washington D.C. area to penetrate the company's computers and deliver untraceable threats and extortion demands, until an FBI surveillance team caught him in the act.

Myron Tereshchuk, 42, pleaded guilty this month to a single charge of "attempted extortion affecting commerce" for demanding a seventeen million dollar ransom in exchange for not broadcasting proprietary information he obtained from MicroPatent, LLC, an intellectual property firm that packages patent and trademark information for law firms.

Tereshchuk ran a small, competing patent document service that ran into trouble when he was allegedly caught removing files from U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and was temporarily banned from the facility. Tereshchuk believed he was the victim of corruption at the patent office, and blamed MicroPatent, according to court records. He began penetrating the company's computers, going through its trash, and pseudonymously sending harassing e-mails to its customers and president.

At one point, the company president tried to use a "Web bug" to trace his cyber tormenter, but Tereshchuk detected the ruse. Meanwhile, FBI agents traced some of the e-mails and intrusions to two homes and a dentist's office in Arlington, Virginia. The residents, and the dentist, made poor suspects, and the agents learned that all three were running unsecured 802.11b networks.

Though he went to some lengths to make himself untraceable technically, past altercations between Tereshchuk and the company made him the prime suspect from the start, according to court records. The clearest sign came when he issued the seventeen million dollar extortion demand, and instructed the company to "make the check payable to Myron Tereshchuk."

The FBI began following Tereshchuk, and in March a surveillance team watched as he drove to a computer lab at the University of Maryland, where he used a purloined student account to send more threatening e-mail. "During this drive he was observed driving erratically and was paying a lot of attention to something in the front passenger side seat," an FBI affidavit notes.

The Bureau got a search warrant for Tereshchuk's home, where they found evidence of his campaign against MicroPatent, as well as the components for hand grenades and the formula and ingredients necessary for making Ricin, according to prosecutors, who say the FBI is still investigating some aspects of the case. Tereshchuk is scheduled for sentencing on October 22nd.

Plea deal in 'war spamming' prosecution

PostPosted: Mon Nov 08, 2004 10:03 pm
by Thorn
http://www.securityfocus.com/news/9453


SECURITYFOCUS NEWS

Plea deal in 'war spamming' prosecution

By Kevin Poulsen, SecurityFocus Sep 3 2004 7:06PM


A Los Angeles man accused of using other people's wi-fi networks to send thousands of unsolicited adult-themed e-mails has entered into a plea agreement with prosecutors in a case filed under the criminal provisions of the federal CAN SPAM Act, officials confirmed Friday.

Nicholas Tombros, 37, was scheduled to enter a guilty plea Friday afternoon in federal court in Los Angeles, but the hearing was abandoned when judge Percy Anderson learned the defense attorney who'd signed off on the deal had been hospitalized and could not appear in court. "[Tombros] said that he wanted to take some time, so the judge scheduled us for a status conference in two weeks," says assistant U.S. attorney Wesley Hsu, who's prosecuting the case.

Tombros' phone number is unlisted, and his new attorney did not return a phone call Friday.

Tombros was charged last month with a single felony under the criminal provisions of the CAN SPAM Act. He allegedly drove around the Los Angeles beachfront suburb of Venice with a laptop and a wi-fi antenna sniffing out unsecured residential access points, which he then used to send thousands of untraceable spam messages advertising pornography sites. An FBI spokesperson said Tombros obtained the e-mail addresses from a credit card aggregation company where he used to work.

The CAN-SPAM Act, which took effect January 1st, doesn't criminalize unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail, but it does outlaw most of the deceptive practices used by spammers. Tombros was charged under a provision that prohibits breaking into someone else's computer to send spam. Also outlawed is the practice of deliberately crafting spammy messages to disguise the origin; materially falsifying the headers in spam; spamming from five or more e-mail accounts established under fake names; or hijacking five or more IP addresses and spamming from them.

A first-time violator face up to one year in federal stir for a small-time operation-- three years if he or she meets one of several minimum standards of bad behavior, like leading a spam gang of at least three people, sending over 2,500 messages in one day, or using 10 or more falsely-registered domain names. As charged, Tombros faced the higher-tier sentence for the "especially complex and especially intricate offense conduct" of allegedly laundering his spam through wireless networks. Hsu wouldn't comment on the details of the plea agreement, and Tombros remains free to back out of the deal.

The criminal provisions of the Act were first exercised last April, when officials charged four Detroit-area men with sending nearly half-a-million deceptive messages through hijacked proxy servers.

Tombros' next court appearance is scheduled for September 17th.

"Over time spammers have shown that they will use any method that they feel they can use to send e-mail," says Andrew Kirch, a security admin at the Abusive Hosts Blocking List. "We may be looking at an isolated incident, or we may be looking at the next big thing."



http://itvibe.com/default.aspx?NewsID=2903

WarSpammer pleads guilty under CAN SPAM Act ...Security
Posted on Tuesday, October 05, 2004 at 22:18 by Rich Kavanagh

We reported a couple of months ago on the court case that involved Nicholas Tombros, the man charged with sending unsolicited email from his car using other people's Wi-Fi networks.

Charged under the CAN SPAM Act of 2003, Nicholas Tombros was sending thousands of email messages from his laptop whilst driving in his car through California. Prosecutors said that he would log on to unencrypted wireless Internet access points to send the spam.

The CAN SPAM Act, which took effect January 1st, doesn't criminalize unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail, but it does prohibit most of the deceptive practices used by spammers.

In a guilty plea lodged with prosecutors, Nicholas Tombros now faces up to six months in custody.

Sentencing is set for December 27th.

Article on illegal access penalties

PostPosted: Mon Mar 21, 2005 7:24 am
by rjdenver
Nice article in the March 18 Times. Mentions an individual being prosecuted for unauthorized wireless access via, amoung other things, "theft of telecommunications services".

Also for any who don't think connecting to your neighbors wireless network has actually been determined to be illegal or not:

"Abdul G. Wattley, pleaded guilty to charges of theft and unauthorized use of a communications network and was sentenced to two years' probation."

http://news.com.com/Wireless+Intern...ml?tag=nefd.top

Rj

The above link may not work.

New link:
http://news.com.com/Wireless+Internet+opens+new+path+for+thieves/2100-1009_3-5626703.html

Or you can just read the text in the next post.

The story in question.

PostPosted: Mon Mar 21, 2005 9:32 am
by wrzwaldo
From the New York Times (Free Online Registration)

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/19/technology/19wifi.html?pagewanted=1

Story Below...


Growth of Wireless Internet Opens New Path for Thieves
By SETH SCHIESEL

Published: March 19, 2005

The spread of the wireless data technology known as Wi-Fi has reshaped the way millions of Americans go online, letting them tap into high-speed Internet connections effortlessly at home and in many public places.

But every convenience has its cost. Federal and state law enforcement officials say sophisticated criminals have begun to use the unsecured Wi-Fi networks of unsuspecting consumers and businesses to help cover their tracks in cyberspace.

In the wired world, it was often difficult for lawbreakers to make themselves untraceable on the Internet. In the wireless world, with scores of open Wi-Fi networks in some neighborhoods, it could hardly be easier.

Law enforcement officials warn that such connections are being commandeered for child pornography, fraud, death threats and identity and credit card theft.

"We have known for a long time that the criminal use of the Internet was progressing at a greater rate than law enforcement had the knowledge or ability to catch up," said Jan H. Gilhooly, who retired last month as special agent in charge of the Secret Service field office in Newark and now helps coordinate New Jersey operations for the Department of Homeland Security. "Now it's the same with the wireless technologies."

In 2003, the Secret Service office in Newark began an investigation that infiltrated the Web sites and computer networks of suspected professional data thieves. Since October, more than 30 people around the world have been arrested in connection with the operation and accused of trafficking in hundreds of thousands of stolen credit card numbers online.

Of those suspects, half regularly used the open Wi-Fi connections of unsuspecting neighbors. Four suspects, in Canada, California and Florida, were logged in to neighbors' Wi-Fi networks at the moment law enforcement agents, having tracked them by other means, entered their homes and arrested them, Secret Service agents involved in the case said.

More than 10 million homes in the United States now have a Wi-Fi base station providing a wireless Internet connection, according to ABI, a technology research firm in Oyster Bay, N.Y. There were essentially none as recently as 2000, the firm said. Those base stations, or routers, allow several computers to share a high-speed Internet connection and let users maintain that connection as they move about with laptops or other mobile devices. The routers are also used to connect computers with printers and other devices.

Experts say most of those households never turn on any of the features, available in almost all Wi-Fi routers, that change the system's default settings, conceal the connection from others and encrypt the data sent over it. Failure to secure the network in those ways can allow anyone with a Wi-Fi-enabled computer within about 200 feet to tap into the base station's Internet connection, typically a digital subscriber line or a cable modem.

Wi-Fi connections are also popping up in retail locations across the country. But while national chains like Starbucks take steps to protect their networks, independent coffee shops that offer Wi-Fi often leave their connections wide open, law enforcement officials say.

In addition, many universities are now blanketing campuses with open Wi-Fi networks, and dozens of cities and towns are creating wireless grids. While some locations charge a fee or otherwise force users to register, others leave the network open. All that is needed to tap in is a Wi-Fi card, typically costing $30 or less, for the user's PC or laptop. (Wi-Fi cards contain an identification code that is potentially traceable, but that information is not retained by most consumer routers, and the cards can in any case be readily removed and thrown away.)

When criminals operate online through a Wi-Fi network, law enforcement agents can track their activity to the numeric Internet Protocol address corresponding to that connection. But from there the trail may go cold, in the case of a public network, or lead to an innocent owner of a wireless home network.

"We had this whole network set up to identify these guys, but the one thing we had to take into consideration was Wi-Fi," Mr. Gilhooly said. "If I get to an Internet address and I send a subpoena to the Internet provider and it gets me a name and physical address, how do I know that that person isn't actually bouncing in from next door?"


Mr. Gilhooly said the possibility of crashing into an innocent person's home forced his team to spend additional time conducting in-person surveillance before making arrests. He said the suspects tracked in his investigation would regularly advise one another on the best ways to gain access to unsecured Wi-Fi systems.

"We intercepted their private conversations, and they would talk and brag about, 'Oh yeah, I just got a new amplifier and a new antenna and I can reach a quarter of a mile,' " he said. "Hotels are wide open. Universities, wide open."

Sometimes, suspected criminals using Wi-Fi do not get out of their car. At 5 a.m. one day in November 2003, the Toronto police spotted a wrong-way driver "with a laptop on the passenger seat showing a child pornography movie that he had downloaded using the wireless connection in a nearby house," said Detective Sgt. Paul Gillespie, an officer in the police sex crimes unit.

The suspect was charged with child pornography violations in addition to theft of telecommunications services; the case is pending. "The No. 1 challenge is that people are committing all sorts of criminal activity over the Internet using wireless, and it could trace back to somebody else," Sergeant Gillespie said.

Holly L. Hubert, the supervisory special agent in charge of the Cyber Task Force at the F.B.I. field office in Buffalo, said the use of Wi-Fi was making it much more difficult to track down online criminals.

"This happens all the time, and it's definitely a challenge for us," she said. "We'll track something to a particular Internet Protocol address and it could be an unsuspecting business or home network that's been invaded. Oftentimes these are a dead end for us."

Ms. Hubert says one group of hackers she has been tracking has regularly frequented a local chain of Wi-Fi-equipped tea and coffee shops to help cover its tracks.

Many times the suspects can find a choice of unsecured wireless networks right from home. Special Agent Bob Breeden, supervisor of the computer crime division for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, said a fraud investigation led in December to the arrest of a Tallahassee man who had used two Wi-Fi networks set up by residents in his apartment complex.

Over those Internet connections, the suspect used the electronic routing information for a local college's bank account to pay for online pornography and to order sex-related products, Mr. Breeden said. The man was caught because he had the products delivered to his actual address, Mr. Breeden said. When officers went to arrest him, they found his computer set up to connect to a neighbor's wireless network. Mr. Breeden said the suspect, Abdul G. Wattley, pleaded guilty to charges of theft and unauthorized use of a communications network and was sentenced to two years' probation.

In another recent case, the principal of a Tallahassee high school had received death threats by e-mail, Mr. Breeden said. When authorities traced the messages to a certain Internet Protocol address and went to the household it corresponded to, Mr. Breeden said, "Dad has his laptop sitting on a table and Mom has another laptop, and of course they have Wi-Fi, and they clearly didn't know anything about the threats."

Cybercrime has been known to flourish even without Wi-Fi's cloak of anonymity; no such link has been found, for example, in recent data thefts from ChoicePoint, Lexis/Nexis and other database companies.

But unsecured wireless networks are nonetheless being looked at by the authorities as a potential tool for furtive activities of many sorts, including terrorism. Two federal law enforcement officials said on condition of anonymity that while they were not aware of specific cases, they believed that sophisticated terrorists might also be starting to exploit unsecured Wi-Fi connections.

In the end, prevention is largely in the hands of the buyers and sellers of Wi-Fi equipment. Michael Coe, a spokesman for SBC, the nation's No. 1 provider of digital subscriber line connections, said the company had provided about one million Wi-Fi routers to its customers with encryption turned on by default. But experts say most consumers who spend the $60 to $80 for a Wi-Fi router are just happy to make it work at all, and never turn on encryption.

"To some degree, most consumers are intimidated by the technology," said Roberta Wiggins, a wireless analyst at the Yankee Group, a technology research firm in Boston. "There is a behavior that they don't want to further complicate their options."

That attitude makes life easier for tech-savvy criminals and tougher for those who pursue them. "The public needs to realize that all they're doing is making it harder on me to go find the bad guys," said Mr. Gilhooly, the former Secret Service agent. "How would you feel if you're sitting at home and meanwhile someone is using your Wi-Fi to hack a bank or hack a company and downloads a million credit card numbers, which happens all the time? I come to you and knock on your door, and all you can say is, 'Oops.' "

Wi-Fi Liability: Potential Legal Risks in Accessing and Operating Wireless Internet

PostPosted: Thu Apr 21, 2005 7:41 am
by ThreePts
Abstract:
Suppose you turn on your laptop while sitting at the kitchen table at home and respond OK to a prompt about accessing a nearby wireless Internet access point owned and operated by a neighbor. What potential liability may ensue from accessing someone else's wireless access point? How about intercepting wireless connection signals? What about setting up an open or unsecured wireless access point in your house or business? Attorneys can expect to grapple with these issues and other related questions as the popularity of wireless technology continues to increase.

This paper explores several theories of liability involving both the accessing and operating of wireless Internet, including the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, wiretap laws, as well as trespass to chattels and other areas of common law. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of key policy considerations.


http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=692881

Even more reasons not to connect

PostPosted: Sat Apr 23, 2005 12:24 pm
by Chris

Wireless network hijacker found guilty

PostPosted: Fri Jul 22, 2005 10:45 am
by audit
http://management.silicon.com/government/0,39024677,39150672,00.htm

A UK man has been fined £500 and sentenced to 12 months' conditional discharge for hijacking a wireless broadband connection.

On Wednesday, a jury at Islewoth court in London found Gregory Straszkiewicz, 24, guilty of dishonestly obtaining an electronic communications service and possessing equipment for fraudulent use of a communications service.

Straszkiewicz was prosecuted under sections 125 and 126 of the Communications Act 2003.

Police sources said Straszkiewicz was caught standing outside a building in a residential area holding a wireless-enabled laptop. The Crown Prosecution Service confirmed that Straszkiewicz was 'piggybacking' the wireless network that householders were using. He was reported to have attempted this several times before police arrested him.

The case is believed to be the first of its kind in the UK.

Last year, 21-year-old Brian Salcedo was sentenced to nine years in a US prison for siphoning credit card numbers over a wireless network from hardware store Lowes.

PostPosted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 8:36 am
by Thorn
http://rrstar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060323/NEWS0107/103230036/1011

From the Rockford Register Star
Rockford, Ill.


Local News: Rockford
Man fined $250 in first area case of Internet piracy

By Chris Green
ROCKFORD REGISTER STAR
>> Click here for more about Chris

ROCKFORD — Just as pirating your neighbor’s cable service to watch premium movie channels is against the law, so too is surfing the Web using someone else’s wireless Internet access.

David M. Kauchak, 32, a former Machesney Park resident, is the first person in Winnebago County to be charged with remotely accessing another computer system without the owner’s approval. He pleaded guilty Tuesday to the charge and was fined $250 and sentenced to one year of court supervision.

“We just want to get the word out that it is a crime. We are prosecuting it, and people need to take precautions,” Assistant State’s Attorney Tom Wartowski said.

Kauchak was arrested in January in Loves Park when local authorities learned he was accessing the Internet through a nonprofit agency’s computer.

Wartowski said a Loves Park police officer was on patrol in the wee hours of the morning when he saw Kauchak sitting in a car with a computer.

“He slowed down, took a look and saw he had a laptop in his lap. He talked to him and put it all together,” Wartowski said.

In a prepared statement, Winnebago County State’s Attorney Paul Logli said, “With the increasing use of wireless computer equipment, the people of Winnebago County need to know that their computer systems are at risk. They need to use encryption or what are known as firewalls to protect their data, much the same way locks protect their homes.

“Likewise, our residents need to know that it is a crime, punishable by up to a year in jail, to access someone else’s computer, wireless system or Internet connection without that person’s approval.”

Staff writer Chris Green can be reached at 815-987-1241 or cgreen@rrstar.com.

Singapore Teen Pleads Guilty to Wireless Piggybacking

PostPosted: Fri Dec 22, 2006 1:46 pm
by Thorn
Singapore Teen Pleads Guilty to Wireless Piggybacking (20 December 2006)

Singapore teenager Garyl Tan Jia Luo pleaded guilty to piggybacking on a neighbor's wireless network. Although the offense carries a maximum jail term of three years and a fine of as much as 10,000 Singapore dollars (US$6,493), the judge seemed inclined toward a more lenient sentence, asking the youth if he would be willing to enlist in mandatory national service earlier than the norm.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/Technology/Singapore-teen-pleads-guilty-to-tapping-into-neighbors-wirelessInternet-network/2006/12/20/1166290612404.html

EDIT : Full text from above link, kept for posterity :
[quote="Sydney Morning Herald, 20 december 2006, internet post"]A Singapore teenager has pleaded guilty to illegally tapping into a neighbour's wireless Internet network, a court official said Wednesday, an offense that carries a maximum penalty of three years in jail and a fine of up to 10,000 Singapore US dollars (US$6,425]