I-Team: Unsecured WiFi is a hacker's dream

Get connected to solutions for protecting your computer

You wouldn't leave your front door wide open to criminals, but thousands of northwest Ohioans are doing exactly that electronically. The I-Team found hundreds of people leaving themselves vulnerable to identity theft, even being framed for a crime.

Computer crime experts call it your first line of defense: Password protecting a wireless router. They connect computers to the internet and should always have privacy settings activated to keep a crook from breaking into your system.

Even from across the street, a crook can connect and get inside your home At the coffee shop, the store and inside your home, if you're using a wireless router, there's a chance you're being watched.

Denise Pheils is a computer security teacher at Owens Community College. She says, "In most cases, you don't even know someone has gained access to your system."

She says criminals are using unsecured internet connections to commit crimes under your identity. "If I'm out there looking at illegal activity, if I'm looking at child porn, guess who they're going to target? You."

That's because the internet connection in your home has a unique signature. It's used to determine how many different people visit a website, but police can also use it to identify someone committing a crime.

Pheils says, "Just being unsecured means someone can control your access to the internet, and everything that they do appears to be you."

State investigators we introduced you to during our child porn investigation last night say innocent people have been investigated for a number of crimes, because their wireless network was unsecure.

Brandon Hoyt is with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation. He says. "The child pornography aspect is one, but fraudulent behavior, spam emails, numerous activities can happen." And you don't want a part in any of them.

Still, countless people are failing to protect themselves. We went with Pheils and her class on what hackers call a war drive.

Using laptops armed with special software - that you can download for free - we were able to find wireless signals without password protection.

It's an online criminal's dream. We started at an apartment complex. In minutes, we found dozens.

Then we went through a neighborhood. House after house, we kept finding more potential victims. Our war drive took about 20 minutes. We found 335 signals. Of those, 110 didn't have a password.

To show us just how vulnerable peoople are, Pheils and her class set up an unsecure system. We placed a volunteer at the unsecure computer. Pheils and a student were able to watch everything he did and even his control system.

In just a couple of clicks, they turned on his webcam. Imagine if the webcam was in your child's bedroom.

They were also able to look at files, write a message, and print it. "You have just been hacked." That's why Pheils and law enforcement say everyone needs to password-protect their system.

Police tell me people don't protect themselves because they think it's too hard. But it's not.

Pheils' computer security class has written step-by-step directions to show you how to protect yourself. You can download them here. They are Word documents.

1. Securing a router without regard to brand

2. Securing a Linksys router according to Linksys

3. Linksys router How-to's

4. Freeware version of COMODO internet security package

5. Basic steps to secure a router

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