Bye Bye WiFi?

Sunday December 12 2004

I woke up at 2:15am to the sound of a car pulling out of my driveway. I immediately ran to my PC and sure enough, they were at it again. “Damn hackers!” I have changed my WiFi password seventeen times in the past month. I have used every mother’s maiden name on my family tree. I even resulted to using the names of pets long since dead. I am nearly out of ideas.Is this just a fad or the wave of the future? It’s called Wardriving. Three or four hacker geeks pile into a car, with laptops, or PDA’s with wireless cards. They drive around the town looking for “hotspots” or areas of WiFi connectivity. When one is located the race ensues. He who hacks first hacks best. The prize? No trophies for this sport I suspect but my secret collection of porn has been compromised no less than a dozen times and my Microsoft Money accounts have been cleaned out twice. The last incursion left me with a nasty case of PCVD, which I had to upgrade my Anti-Virus software to remove.

Having your home network hacked is not only costly and annoying, it is also embarrassing and leaves you feeling violated. The invaders now know your surfing habits, have all of your email addresses and have more than likely passed your personal information around like sloppy seconds at a frat party. Just thinking about it leaves me feeling dirty. Formatting the hard drive afterward helps, but you never really forget. I called the police the first seven or eight times. They obligingly drove out to my house and filed a report with their Cyber Crimes Division but I feel little satisfaction from their efforts. They always seem more interested in staking out chat rooms to entrap sexual predators than dealing with pesky wardrivers. They tend to make me feel as though I instigated it somehow, like I had it coming.

I looked on-line for a support group where I could talk with other victims but there are many who are afraid to come forward. The humiliation of a wireless network invasion is debilitating to say the least. A few people who have had their network hacked just don’t go on line anymore. Some users turn off their high-speed connections and sign up for Earthlink, a dial-up connection that is pretty much worthless for anything more than email. Others sell their PC’s, on eBay and give up computing entirely. My livelihood depends on the Internet therefore I must deal with these feelings of ineptitude. I must reclaim my dignity and self-confidence.

One victim I talked to suggested that downgrading to a wired router would offer a renewed sense of security but Wireless is like a drug. Once you have become accustomed to the mobility of WiFi on a high-speed Internet connection, going back on the wire is very difficult. For example, I was playing Texas Hold ‘Em on line just yesterday when the need to evacuate my bowels came on with a vengeance. If I had been on a wired network, I would have had to log out of the game for 20 minutes, then log back in. On WiFi, I just picked up my laptop and headed for the crapper. I even won 26 dollars!

The thought of losing wireless connectivity in my home is depressing. I have so few tools to protect myself yet the threats are so many. I hope in the near future that someone invents a security measure that will at least notify me when my firewall has been breached. A warning beacon that prompts me to shut the power when I am being attacked. Currently, It’s like being chloroformed and raped in my sleep and I'm not even aware it's happened till the morning.

Copyright © 2004 Quaid Davis. All rights reserved.