WiFi Hijacking

Is it illegal in New Zealand to access unsecured AP's and can the people doing it be traced at all?

Ideally, it should be illegal to gain access into anybody's AP, either secured or unsecured, i am not too familiar with N zealand Laws. But just Imagine someone coming into your bedroom upstairs cos u left the main door open downstairs, was that proper for him?

And yes, it can be traced if there is a logging system attached it.

It's always been a grey area. At the end of the day they can pin it down to unauthorized access of a private computer system if they really wanted to nail you.

I was thinking about the front door left open/unlocked analogy the other day. The more correct one would be, an unsecured AP is more like leaving your front door open/unlocked and having a person/sign out on the lawn telling passers by about it, as that's what AP's do by default, they broadcast their information on the airwaves.

To answer your question, I'm not sure about the legallity about it. I don't think anyone's been tried and convicted in NZ yet, but it will probably happen. Usually the only way to catch someone is to catch them red handed. I.e. sitting outside your house in a car with a laptop. It's very hard to catch them otherwise. It's hard to say MAC address 00:00:00:00:00:00 relates to joe bloggs, he logged onto my network and leeched 2GB, i'm going to tell the police on him.

True noodles, just trying not to encourage the guy.

There was an article in the local paper recently that quoted a policeman saying it is an offense under section 252 of the Crimes (Ammendment) Act 2003.

The ammendments were made to keep pace with technology and includes issues such as fraudulently using people's internet access, downloading another person's cellphone address book or using other people's passwords for internet sites.

I've copied the article to http://www.marlwifi.org.nz/article.p...60323001956638

It is very difficult to trace on a standard setup, however, unless you end up getting caught in the act like the guys in the article (I have yet to find out who they were).