[real-eyes] Wireless router hijacked for child pornography

From: Steven Clark <kcpadfoot@xxxxxxxxx>
To: real-eyes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2011 07:11:02 -0500
The following story is an example of why I am always sending stories out 
about computer security.
If you want a good secure password go to
https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm
Sure, they are long, but how many times do you really access your router 
and the wireless password?  Use one of these long passwords, store it on 
a thumb drive and put it somewhere safe.
Steve
Wireless router hijacked for child pornography
By Todd Ruger - heraldtribune.com
SARASOTA - Malcolm Riddell awoke at 6 a.m. one day last year to some of 
the most
heart-sinking words a homeowner can hear: "FBI, open up."
When he did, a dozen armed FBI agents swarmed through the lawyer's lofty 
Palm Avenue
condo in downtown Sarasota. They held him against the wall, separated 
him from his
wife and then questioned him on the porch looking down 12 stories onto 
Sarasota Bay.
Riddell says he was not nervous or scared, just clueless. The FBI agents 
searched
through his computer equipment for a while, then made it all clear: 
child pornography
images were flowing through Riddell's wireless Internet connection.
Riddell's wireless router put him in the middle of a child pornography 
investigation
that would eventually lead to a man who admitted possessing and sending 
10 million
illegal files from a boat in the Sarasota marina below Riddell's windows.
"How in the world could that be?" Riddell said. "We started discussing 
the possibilities."
The agents cleared Riddell that June morning of any suspicion. But for a 
short time,
Riddell faced accusations of a felony crime that can lead to decades 
behind bars
and a lifetime designation as a sex offender.
As the FBI searched his home, Riddell learned first-hand the dangers of 
leaving a
home wireless router unprotected without a password, and open for others 
to jump
on and use his Internet service.
Riddell, 58, considers himself tech-savvy, and he knew better than to 
leave the router
unprotected, since all the online activity of strangers appears to be 
coming from
his account.
A router is a device that allows for a wireless connection to the 
Internet. If not
secured with a password, that connection can be used by anyone with a 
computer within
range of the router's signal.
But on the 12th floor, in a building where the average resident is of 
retirement
age, Riddell said he ignored the risks when he set it up.
"You're thinking, what's the point? I thought it was only 400 feet was 
the range,"
said Riddell, a Harvard University business school graduate whose 
fluency in Mandarin
helped him forge business relationships in Asia.
But the dangers became clear when the FBI convinced Riddell to let them 
put a tracer
on his router to see if they could catch the person using the screen 
names "Hardalone243,"
"Hardpedo" and "Hard_foryou68."
"At that point there were six people on my router," Riddell said. "We 
didn't know
which one was the guy."
The FBI had been tracking "Hardalone243" since September 2009, but 
needed help identifying
him, according to a special agent's affidavit filed in federal court.
Agents say they eventually tracked the images back to Mark Brown, 52, 
who was arrested
Sept. 30 on a boat, "Aloan at Last."
Brown worked as the captain of the yacht, moored in the Sarasota Marina 
within view
of Riddell's building. FBI agents say Brown used several unsecured, 
non-password
protected wireless networks near the boat.
In interviews after his arrest, Brown told investigators he had more 
than 10 million
files of child pornography photos and videos on his computer. Brown 
remains in custody
while awaiting trial on a federal child pornography charge that could 
result in decades
in prison if convicted.
Justin McClellan, a technician for We Fix Computers in Sarasota, said 
awareness of
the need for security on wireless routers is growing. The technicians 
there see fewer
unsecured routers during their calls for service.
Many Internet service providers will set up protections on the routers 
when they
install them, and the routers from the store have better security built 
in, McClellan
said.
And securing a wireless router with a password is also as simple as 
following step-by-step
programs that come with those routers.
"The biggest security risk on routers if someone were to buy their own 
is they all
come with a default username and password, and those are really well 
known," McClellan
said.
Riddell came to a conclusion after the early-morning raid on his condo. 
"I'm going
to encrypt this thing immediately," he said.
Original Article
Our Take:
  we have been saying this for years - if you don't take your security 
seriously,
the lose of some bandwidth from your connection could be the LEAST of 
your worries...

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[real-eyes] Wireless router hijacked for child pornography

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