F**ker Ripping Off My Parents

[ComputerNecromancer]

Something I used to do back when I had a Wireless Access Point (WAP) because the router didn't do wifi was unplug the ethernet cable at the router when the WAP wasn't in use.

This meant that you could hack away to your heart's delight and not get anywhere. Only if you hit the right password while the WAP was connected to the router would you get in.

If you hit the right password while the cable was unplugged, you'd get a connection to the WAP, but no internet.

[2gigch1]

(Hopefully) Final Update:

So I came down with the kids Friday night and after a late Christmas I set off to work: The MAC Address and 63 character ASCII / WPA are in place. The network is now named "Not Hard To Figure Out Who's Stealing"

A search of the Maryland Judiciary website has discovered the young man I suspect has a felony "possession with intent to distribute (not marijuana)" trial in two weeks in circuit court. His mom, who has always been good to my parents (and vice versa), had visited Christmas Day with food and mentioned in passing her 'troubled youngest had fallen in with the wrong crowd.' Furthermore he had been due to enter the Marines in November, but that was on hold - he has to stay out of (further) trouble for 12 months.

And on top of it all their house is in foreclosure (search made on Zillow).

So with all these circumstances in place, unless somehow my 'likely suspect' (or possibly his friend in the loud pickup that my parents believe may also be involved) actually breaks through and hit them again, we'll let the matter drop. An inquiry or police investigation would be devastating.

They have provided more than enough rope for an effective self-hanging, if needed.

[gremcint]

just call the wifi network "you just lost the game" and you'll have your revenge.

[Talon]

I believe this was a Brute Force Cracking program used to beat the new password. It was only 14 characters long and didn't take a long time to beat.

Really?
My Wifi password is 15 chars long, but doesn't contain any dictionary words.

http://www.passwordmeter.com/ rates my password at 94%, very strong.
https://howsecureismypassword.net/ claims my password would take a desktop PC 6 Billion years to crack

What was your old password's strength?

[CoffeeMonkey]

Every time I see the title of this thread...EVERY time...I first see it as "F**ker Ripping Off My Pants"

Nothing valid to add. Carry on.

[sstabeler]

Really?
My Wifi password is 15 chars long, but doesn't contain any dictionary words.

http://www.passwordmeter.com/ rates my password at 94%, very strong.
https://howsecureismypassword.net/ claims my password would take a desktop PC 6 Billion years to crack

What was your old password's strength?

that's nothing- mine is 659 trigintillion years. Aka, heat death of the universe would occur first. ( surprisingly, it isn't actually that difficult to type in. Yes, I use a password manager.) Yeah, good luck guessing it.

[Ironclad Alibi]

that's nothing- mine is 659 trigintillion years. Aka, heat death of the universe would occur first. ( surprisingly, it isn't actually that difficult to type in. Yes, I use a password manager.) Yeah, good luck guessing it.

I would guess it, but I don't want the universe to die.

[Sarlon]

My aunt has this exact same problem, but red checkmark says its someone using her mifi thingy from somewhere not local. (the town she lives in in Maryland in the offseason; read winter; is 200 on a REALLY good day, out in the middle of no where, and has one road leading into the town that ends at the bay).

She's changed her password, but red check mark swears that will only keep the locals out, any advice on how to keep someone else out? didn't think it was possible to steal internet like that (from a greater distance then local).

[2gigch1]

I'm not sure how someone could access a MiFi 'not locally', so I would ignore that suggestion from the provider.

Two things: first, your aunt can log into the wifi and look to see who is using the unit. One MAC address for each of her wifi devices. Anything not hers is the culprit. And as I described upstream, the MAC Addressing is a great way to bar anyone who should not be on her mifi.

In our case we have stopped all abuse of the wifi and use levels have dropped to normal.

Sounds like your aunt may be near my parents, who live in Maryland on a peninsula straddled by the Manokin and Wicomico Rivers. Who knows, could be the same guy?

[cindybubbles]

From this site, the following words will take very long to crack if they were used as passwords:

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis: A novemdecillion years
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious: 174 duodecillion years
Sesquipedalian: 8 million years

Of course, that's just using letters. If I replaced some letters with numbers, capitalized some lowercase letters and added some dashes and underscores, I'd get this:
Sup3r_Cal1Fragil1stic-eXp1al1doc10us: 649 quindecillion years

Also, the longest word in the English language, with 189,819 letters, will literally take infinity to crack. Here is a link to it: http://www.digitalspy.ca/fun/news/a4...p1njMWBZSAO50L.

[Crossbow]

Those numbers are only for brute-force cracking. Most of the easy cracks fall to a dictionary search or social engineering.

Personally, I like the idea that xkcd came up with. Easy to remember, hard to crack.


Just don't use "correct horse battery staple." It's already in the password dictionaries...

[JustaCashier]

Note to Self: Change Password in 999,999 years.

Mike

[CoffeeMonkey]

Those numbers are only for brute-force cracking. Most of the easy cracks fall to a dictionary search or social engineering.

Personally, I like the idea that xkcd came up with. Easy to remember, hard to crack.


Just don't use "correct horse battery staple." It's already in the password dictionaries...

I used this principle in my wifi password at my house. Don't fret, I don't have the house, the wifi, or the internet acct anymore.

SonyRedWingCheeseGrater. easy to explain to people. Always got a "...what?" when giving it to guests. Roommates couldn't consistently remember. (Not that that was indicative of anything. One, who is my bestest friend, also consistently asks me how old she is because she can't keep track and our birthdays are close together.)

Overall, I'm not a super responsible password person. But I'm starting to get better. I do wish that places didn't REQUIRE symbols and numbers, though, because it interrupts this sort of phrasing.

ETA: I never use pets' names, either for passwords or security questions. because depending on WHEN i created the account depends on what pet name I might have used and if I can't remember when I made the account, how am I supposed to remember if it was before or after the old dog died and we got the new dog, or is it my cat?

[Gilhelmi]

For the Army Email accounts the password rules were (this was over 2 year ago, it has changed since then, probably not for the better)

1) Must be at least 10 digits long.
2) Must have 2 Capital case letters, 2 Lower case letters, 2 symbols, 2 numbers.
3) Must be changed every 180 days.
4) Must Not be in the last 10 passwords you used.
5) Must use your CAC ID to change your password (Common Access Card, ID card with a chip that you must put into military computers to use them, not the network but the computer itself, IF you have authorized access. Very long winded rant cut, about how to get/keep the access to a computer needed to do your job.)

Then, if you screw up your security questions, you got to talk to the Army.mil help desk. I will spare you the horror of that bureaucracy also.

[fireheart]

The uni passwords were just as bad:

-Had to be 8 characters long minimum.
-Had to include at least 1 number.
-Had to include 1 symbol.
-COULD NOT BE A WORD IN THE ENGLISH DICTIONARY (even spelt backwards)
-Could not be a cuss word (even if not in English)
-Could not be your birthdate or a name of some kind.

I just used two japanese words I knew and left it at that.