A man hacked into his neighbor's wireless network and sent threatening emails to the Vice President and the governor of Minnesota using the neighbor's name.
Friday a Minnesota man pleaded guilty to hacking into his neighbor's wireless home network and posing as the neighbor to send threatening emails to Vice President Joe Biden, Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty and U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar.
St. Paul, Minnesota-based Star Tribune reports that a dispute between Barry Ardolf and his neighbor Matt Kostolnik began back in 2008 after Kostolnik reported to police that Ardolf picked up his four-year-old son and kissed him. Although Kostolnik didn't press formal charges, he and his wife said they only wanted to keep their distance.
The report goes on to claim that an enraged Ardolf carried out a plan to exact revenge by using a password-cracking program to hack into Kostolnik's wireless router. Once he gained access to the network, he set up a fake email account using Kostolnik's name and sent emails-- one containing images of child pornography and one containing "sexually suggestive" language-- to Kostolnik's co-workers and boss.
The vindictive plot didn't stop there. He also used the fake email account to create a fake Kostolnik-based MySpace page which also contained a child porn image. He later he tried to frame Kostolnik by creating another fake email account using a particular woman's name and sent an email to Kostolnik's law firm, claiming that Kostolnik assaulted her although a sexual incident with the real woman never happened.
Ardolf was finally caught after sending Kostolnik-based emails to the three government officials.
The Star Tribune said that police raided Ardolf's house and discovered more than a dozen computers and dozens of storage devices. These produced incriminating evidence including detailed notes of e-mail addresses, text of emails that had already been sent, passwords and photographs. Ardolf was confronted with the evidence last summer and a plea deal was arranged, however he changed his mind. Officials then charged him with child porn offenses, and he now faces a maximum of 44 years in prison.
Friday Ardolf pleaded guilty to charges of identity theft, threats, and possession and transmission of child pornography. Matt Kostolnik told reporters that he was glad Ardolf accepted responsibility for what he had done.
"It was terrible what we went through," Matt Kostolnik said outside the courtroom Friday. "I wouldn't want anyone to have to go through what we did. I think what he did today was right."
This article definitely encourages me to use the best wireless security as possible at all times..I wonder if the neighbor that got hacked was on something weak like WEP..
The guy had it coming. The article isn't exactly detailed. Where did he kiss the kid? Forehead? Lips? Cheek? What was the prior relationship? How long had the neigbors known eachother? It is weird that anyone other than a parent would kiss a 4 year old anywhere but still. He kinda went berserk for no reason. Guys like that need their nuts chopped off with a rusty spoon.
you can spoof this but its easy to prove to the police that you didnt do it because 2 people cant have the same id and stay connected (we are not talking about ip here)
so they would have a log of all the devices which requested an ip address from the router for accses to the internet
anyway no encryption is safe, there are ways arround most of them with freely availble tools the only difference between security testers,hackers and people like me is security testers and people like me only do it to systems which we have been allowed full accses over and in most casses have the login code anyway
wep keys are not secure, they continuously broadcast the key thats why it takes less than 10mins for even someone sitting infront of a guide to get arround it
all you have to do is log there internet traphic and find the key that is being ussed the most and you have it
wpa and better encryptiong actually encrypts the key and so is infinatly better but this can still be bypassed
id recomend elcentral that you get rid of that wep key you are using for something a little more modern, you can get a pre set up bootcd with it all ready to go in less than an hour and do this easily
to http://www.openxtra.co.uk/articles/wep-weaknesses
i tested it on my own network to see just how weak it was and i was suprissed to learn that you only need a handfull of comands to actually get someones wep key
All you have to do is spoof your mac address and login to the router setting. Then change the time the router has on to the macs from forever to like 5 sec. Most people don't ever change there router default password. Then clear the router logs and your done.
So he's taking revenge for kissing his boy by posting child pornography...
So he's taking revenge for kissing his boy by posting child pornography...