UK Man fined for hijacking wireless connection

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A UK man has been fined £500 and sentenced to 12 months’ conditional discharge for hijacking a wireless broadband connection.

A jury at in London found Gregory Straszkiewicz, 24, guilty of dishonestly obtaining an electronic communications service and possessing equipment for fraudulent use of a communications service.

Straszkiewicz was prosecuted under sections 125 and 126 of the Communications Act 2003.

Police sources said Straszkiewicz was caught standing outside a building in a residential area holding a wireless-enabled laptop. The Crown Prosecution Service confirmed that Straszkiewicz was ‘piggybacking’ the wireless network that householders were using. He was reported to have attempted this several times before police arrested him.

“The case clearly illustrates that users need to secure their wireless networks” says Margaret Kelly, operations manager with Irish security company Entropy Ltd. On the topic of corporations and wireless security Margaret commented “Because wireless LANs often bypass corporate network perimeters, it is critical that organisations revise their views on perimeter, internal and web security. Corporations need to plan for wireless LANs within their enterprise security policy or face a loss of network integrity as departments deploy their own wireless LANs without IT involvement.”

Last year, 21-year-old Brian Salcedo was sentenced to nine years in a US prison for siphoning credit card numbers over a wireless network from hardware store Lowes.

These important precedents hopefully mean that Ireland cannot be far behind, within EU law, to prosecute wi-fi hijackers. Though the problem may not be so common here, many white hat hackers have demonstrated through organised and documented “War Walks” just how many open wi-fi networks there are around Dublin in particular.

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