The
hacker can swap out the SSID's of your and his router so you
become "Hack" and he becomes "Linksys."
This is simple enough to do in the routers' control panels.
After this is done the intruder could setup his router to
work as a repeater and enable WPA security on your router.
At this point the hacker may as well cancel his broadband
internet subscription.
What
does all this do? Let look at it [Fig. 4]. The "Linksys"
router that your computer always logs into is really not your
own router any more. It is the hacker's router. You log into
his router thinking it's yours and because his router is setup
to repeat your WiFi you can still get out on the Internet
and may never notice any difference. The hacker on the other
hand is accessing your router which has been renamed to "Hack."
Hacker
enjoys the full benefits of a secured WPA connection which
would otherwise be unavailable had he been just plain logging
into your router without all this extra gymnastics. By filtering
out all other neighborhood users except for you he doesn't
take chances of someone else using the connection. You on
the other hand are still happy go lucky and will never know
something is going on unless the hacker has intentionally
limited your speed so he can have faster downloads.
Fig. 4 Swapped SSIDs. Another neighbor
has been hacked.
What
we can learn from these two examples is that leaving default
passwords and leaving your WiFi connection unprotected can
be a bad idea. Still, the chances that someone is leeching
your connection are limited at best.
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