Illegal, schmegal

I am fed up with the recent news on a 17-year old guy in Singapore charged for using an unprotected wireless access point without prior authorization from the owner. I suppose the person who owns the access point has nothing better to do other than to sue people for using his wireless point, when he did not even encrypt or place any protection on his access point in the first place. Article: http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=57512
Btw: this article described that war-driving is another web term for piggy backing, which is incorrect. War-driving means driving a vehicle around a neighborhood to find wireless APs to use. Piggybacking is taking advantage of an unprotected wireless AP. Slightly different.

Piggybacking on an unsecured wireless network is actually rather hard to justify on a legal front. In the owner's perspective, so long as other people are using his wireless without his permission automatically equates to illegal, and therefore he shall sue the person because he has nothing better to do. This judgement is not wrong, but it can be disputed.

First of all, merely using the wireless access point on a technical viewpoint is not wrong, as the technology is merely behaving the way it should: broadcasting a radio signal created from a packet and then being received by a network card or wireless adapter. This can only be deemed illegal if the person in question is doing illegal acts on the network(eg. watching child porn, trading body parts or accessing the owner's computer)

Lets say that I am the person using open wireless points without "authorization". Ethically speaking, the owner would argue with a common metaphor: Accessing my access point can be likened to entering your neighbour's house when the door is open. Also ethically speaking, I can counter-sue by arguing that the electromagnetic waves broadcasted from the wireless router were trespassing on MY property (house) and therefore I have all the rights to use the waves to access internet. According to the metaphor, I can enter my neighbour's house if his house is in my house and his door is open. In addition, the prolonged exposure to electromagnetic waves might also adversely affect my health so I am also risking my own health by using the owner's wireless. I was not hunting down the owner's wireless, I only switched my computer on and found that the owner's network invaded my house so I had to do something about it.

Also technically, the fact the access point being open alone is already enough for me to claim that my access is authorized, as my access was not stopped by any encryption or protection means (WEP, WPA, PUK etc.). This point can be further illustrated by this equation:

If
Access stopped = unauthorized entity
Then
Authorized entity = Access given

And also because the router was setup in "open" authentication, if I had established a connection, it means my adapter had requested permission to use the access point, and the access point had given it authorization.

In addition, the definition of cracking is:

Cracking a wireless network means defeating the encryption so that you can establish a connection without being invited.

In other words, if the encryption is not present, you are invited(technically) to establish a connection. Simple as that.

Have I proven my point?

Even so, users should be aware of the possible dangers in using open APs. Since you are on the same platform(network) as the owner, it would not be too hard for him to access your harddisk by spreading trojans that create backdoors or keyloggers that log your passwords and credentials when users travel across the net. Likewise the user can also perform the same acts against the owner and in addition, slow down connection speeds by hogging up their bandwidth when streaming data (eg. downloading video).

To obtain strongest possible signal strength from access points, one must take note to place the adapter on higher elevation and not near metals or against walls. The best barriers that radio waves can travel through are glass. Try not to stay between solid concrete walls. Of course you can also modify a small satalite dish to take in radio signals to be decrypted by your network card, but that is practically not feasible. In case you are interested, they can be purchased from Simlim or eBay. If your neighbours are all stingy enough to place encryption on their wireless routers, some default passwords can be tried on default SSIDs such as linksys, belkin, motorola, netgear. Try admin, 1234 or guest. For a complete list: http://www.phenoelit.de/dpl/dpl.html

Though I am not entirely sure this is legal, I definitely do not indulge in these evil ways.