My LTE Thunderbolt tethering is being hacked right now!

[TheForce]

Just a few moments ago, I saw attemps to hack intoi my tethering wifi on my Thunderbolt LTE connection. I was on the phone with my wife and had my sling player streaming content at the same time and the attack appeared as two additional mac addresses making connection. So I shut the wifi down and killed their connection, mine too. I should have changed the default tethering PW and SSID but did a stupid thing and left it alone. Someone near by in the hotel here, probably in an adjacent room is the hacker thief. Anyway I fixed both SSID and PW to very strong and also limited the access to my ipad and my laptop MAC addresses.
Is there anything else I should do? The encryption is WPA2 (AES) too. I think one MAC address had access for about 2-3 minutes before I shut them down.
Hopefully, they just had access to use and not to plant a key logger of some other trojan. I'm going to sign off now and do a scan of my hard drive. The ipad was also on but I don't think that is easily hacked like my laptop can be.

Any thoughts from you experts?

 

[jcrandall]

Personally my guess would be someone just trying to access the internet, especially since it was a hotel. Could even be two different people. Your signal may have covered rooms on both sides of you, above you, and below you.

Scan the hard drive and password your Tethering device, but beyond that I wouldn't worry about it.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

Agreed. Recently on a train I was tethering, and my Droid kept showing new MAC addresses trying to access it. So I setup security and the problem went away. And as we talked in an old thread. Name your SSID "Not your f'n wi-fi" or something of the sort.

 

[TheForce]

Agreed. Recently on a train I was tethering, and my Droid kept showing new MAC addresses trying to access it. So I setup security and the problem went away. And as we talked in an old thread. Name your SSID "Not your f'n wi-fi" or something of the sort.

Yep. Did that. I recall the discussion and just did the ssid as "no tresspassing"

Doing the scan on the hard drive now and so far good with zero infections.


so, thats two things i forgot on this trip, toothpaste and secure my tethering app.

Btw- TSA did a thorough body cavity search on me this time. Took 15 minutes of touchy feely. He reached down my pants with a cloth swatch and then stuck that in a machine to see if i had any bombs up my butt. Before he started, he apologized and said the supervisors were there to view the hand search procedure. I saw the guy there with his clipboard writing all sorts of notes as the guy did what he was instructed to do. They had evety had inspection spot occupied and people were being pulled off the regular scanner as needed. This was the most invasive search yet. But, my carryon bag full of ipad, smart phone chargers and other electronics stuff with batteries only went through the xray. They completely missed my ceramic 9mm with polymer ammo. Just kidding!

 

[Hall]

Any thoughts from you experts?

"hacked right now!"
"attack"
A "hacker thief" ?

I think you're seriously over-reacting. You had an open WiFi access point, i.e. "free internet access" for someone !

Since you have their MAC address, why not have the authorities track them down ?

 

[Hall]

Name your SSID "Not your f'n wi-fi" or something of the sort.

I actually re-named a neighbor's open WiFi to "Free WiFi Internet Here !!" or something similar I have to say, they impressed me 'cause within 1-2 days they fixed it properly with (some level of) security.

 

[diogen]

There are probably two reasons why your wireless network should be protected: the bandwidth is limited and your ISP demands it (ours do).
Other than that - why lock it up? My 11b is open (I run separates for a, b, and g/n for other reasons). It is used half a dozen times a week, for a total of 5-50MB. Less than a minute of nominal bandwidth.Mostly port 80.

I find it hard to argue with Schneier's point of view
http://www.satelliteguys.us/124097-need-help-wireless-internet-2.html#post1231076

Diogen.

 

[TheForce]

I actually re-named a neighbor's open WiFi to "Free WiFi Internet Here !!" or something similar I have to say, they impressed me 'cause within 1-2 days they fixed it properly with (some level of) security.

Yes, and it's not the casual wifi theif I'm concerned about. Rather it's guys like you.

Actually, in the early days of cable broadband, we all got warnings from the company to protect your access with shutting off file sharing etc. Nobody paid any attention to that. So one night I was feeling kind of mischievous and started to explore around my node's hard drives. There were a bunch of them. I was able to open people's check books, access files where they listed their passwords for credit cards and in one case I saw a folder full of male nudity gay porn stuff. Lots of pictures. I saw they had a color printer shared too. So I grabbed a bunch of images and dropped them onto their printer. About an hour later I got an error message the printer was out of paper. Interesting!


Anyway, the scan of my hard drive came out clean and now the access is set to only allow my two devices. Should not be an issue. I will commend Verizon for having the capability to protect and encrypt the tethering app as the maximum number of access devices is 8 on this. I only need 3 at the most at one time but I have it set now to two.

I've been using tethering for about 4 years now with lots of traveling and this was the first time I ever caught anyone trying to hop on. We even have free wifi here in the hotel but as typical it is slow and requires you to jump through some annoying ad hoops to get on the www.

 

[The Insider]

There are probably two reasons why your wireless network should be protected: the bandwidth is limited and your ISP demands it (ours do).
Other than that - why lock it up? My 11b is open (I run separates for a, b, and g/n for other reasons). It is used half a dozen times a week, for a total of 5-50MB. Less than a minute of nominal bandwidth.Mostly port 80.

I find it hard to argue with Schneier's point of view
http://www.satelliteguys.us/124097-need-help-wireless-internet-2.html#post1231076

Diogen.

Thats all fine until your neighbor is using your internet to download illegal files. And it gets tracked back to your IP.. Sure they will eventually find out its not you but getting hand cuffed and being taken away because they think you are downloading pictures of kids well just the accusation is bad enough to ruin your life.

 

[diogen]

Well, I agree with that.
You need control over how it is used.
By sharing only 11b there is no temptation to use it as an ISP.
Despite being 11Mbps on paper, it is slow in real life.

I think it is an issue of scale.
A pedophile will not rely on a random 11b internet connection.
Somebody sending off a virus into the wild might, but he won't have problems finding other ways.

Not saying this is the right way to do it - just something that should be considered.

Diogen.

 

[digiblur]

Just name your SSID to virus testing. They will pass on connecting. I setup one with no internet access wide open by a window. I checked the logs from time to time. No ips were handed out for several weeks when I had it open

 

[TheForce]

That's playing a bluffing game with security matter. IMO, doesn't work. I don't carry a toy gun for security and I'm not inclined to bait / waste time and money on a bluff with my mobile hotspot. If I made my SSID a threat of getting a virus, rest assured, my hotspot will be firing real bullets with an appropriate warning.

Aside from the porn risk and computer hacking, identity theft, issues, I am also paying for this service so wifi theft is stealing money from me.

 

[Frank Jr.]

I do not broadcast my SSID. Does that not help?

 

[digiblur]

What's wrong with turning on wpa2 with a strong password on the tether? That's what I do when I tether on my Epic.

 

[Frank Jr.]

I just looked it up, since I don't tether my question was dumb..........sorry

 

[TheForce]

I do not broadcast my SSID. Does that not help?

I don't think so. I see no SSID signals once in awhile and all you need to know is the PW of if no encryption just log in anyway.

digiblur- You didn't read my post where I said I screwed up. Getting ready for the trip I just forgot to redo the SSID which identified the wifi as a default Verizon account. And I left the PW set to their default. Only for a couple minutes and then remembered to do it. wpa2 is set by default too but that doesn't do any good if someone knows the default PW.

 

[Hall]

I do not broadcast my SSID. Does that not help?

It works great for the "casual" person looking for free/open WiFi. A [strike]hacker[/strike] cracker will have tools that show "hidden" SSIDs.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

I actually re-named a neighbor's open WiFi to "Free WiFi Internet Here !!" or something similar I have to say, they impressed me 'cause within 1-2 days they fixed it properly with (some level of) security.

That is awesome!!

Sent from my iPad using SatelliteGuys

 

[John Kotches]

If you want to secure your wireless, there are reasonable measures to take.

1. Restrict access to only MAC addresses of your machines.
2. Don't broadcast the SSID.
3. Use a strong password (at least one upper, lower, number and special and minimum 8 in length)

There are tools on the net to check password strength and that's a big plus.

While the ssid can be found and the mac can be spoofed the password is tough to get past if it is sufficiently strong. The first two stop the casual types.

Cheers,

Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk