Help Stealing my internetz!

[Bahumat]

Heya,

I have the BT homehub and the wireless is currently enabled.
I do not believe anyone is stealing my internet, and if they wanted to, they would surely need that weird little alphanumeric code on the router itself?

What's strange is my Ventrilo program has a ping of 500, no other member seems to be affected so it got me thinking "if something is using my pc to send/receive data, what can I do about it?"

Is there a program which will display my incoming and outgoing internet signal? Like Task Manager, but for programs that use the internet.

Oh yeah, I am on Vista

 

[Mabs]

the router should have a log of total data on it, sorted for wired and wireless? check that - if your worried about wireless, unscrew the ariel or possibly wrap it in aluminium foil (or so ive been told)

/edit
which will obv disable it
if your using it.. if its not protected it is possible to find open wireless networks much like bluejacking , so you ought to secure it

 

[Kryten]

the standard protection on those Homehubs (WEP) is crackable within circa 10 minutes by someone semi-skilled and in desperate need of your internet connection. (been there!)

There is a plethora of configuration options available, if it's the new style homehub (that thing that looks like a Wii) then open your browser and go see http://bthomehub.home
Otherwise if it's an older one (up to and including the old big blue things with wireless) go see either 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.0.1 in the browser.
You will see plenty of configuration options including the ability to upgrade the security, disable the wireless, etc etc etc.
It's not directly answering your question re monitoring software but it might help elay any fears about internet burglars

I'm not really too aware of any software that can keep an eye on who or what is connected to your router, but the router config may also have an "attached devices" list.

 

[Steffan-]

Don't know how easy it is to "crack" a MAC adr. but that's also an option. That is, set the router to only work with your netcards MAC adr.

 

[Bahumat]

Seems whatever was causing me high pings has stopped. Use vent alot so will keep my eye out for high pings and check the router settings.

Cheers all

 

[rynnor]

the standard protection on those Homehubs (WEP) is crackable within circa 10 minutes by someone semi-skilled and in desperate need of your internet connection. (been there!)

They seriously still use WEP? Thats pretty pathetic - its so easy to set up practically unbreakable encryption for your wireless now

 

[Chilly]

Use a wireless sniffer to see what MACs are transmitting.

Use netstat to see what processes on your machine have active sockets and which ports/IPs they are hooked to.

 

[rynnor]

If I was feeling particularly paranoid id use something like Wireshark - Wireshark: Go deep.

 

[Kryten]

Don't know how easy it is to "crack" a MAC adr. but that's also an option. That is, set the router to only work with your netcards MAC adr.

Annoyingly ludicrously easy :/

 

[Bahumat]

Use a wireless sniffer to see what MACs are transmitting.

Use netstat to see what processes on your machine have active sockets and which ports/IPs they are hooked to.

cheers for the netstat

 

[Steffan-]

Annoyingly ludicrously easy :/

How do they do this? Just out of curiosity, do they "scan" the net in some kind of way, or is it just brute-force?

 

[Kryten]

I've only done it through automated processes (aircrack on linux) so my knowledge is only limited, but in laymans terms the MAC addresses are not in any way encrypted.
I believe that when an access point is MAC filtered, it actively asks the addressing client if it is a certain mac address.

"Are you mac address xx.xx.xx.xx ?"
"No."
"Access denied."
and so forth until it's exhausted the allowable address list. By which time, your script/program/leet hacking skills knows the usable addresses.

Spoofing the address itself is as simple as bridging your connection through a virtual network adapter using the new address.

Please note the above is my very brief understanding from limited research in cracking WEP myself for semi-legal purposes. It could be wrong, but certainly not far from it.