Kevin Rose on Wireless Hacking and Social Engineering
This is old news- a five-year-old antique. Most of you may have already watched this video podcast (16m 59s). The methods used may either be of little use or overused nowadays. However, they are still good demos of security’s greatest weakness- the users. Fast forward to 2007. Methodologies have evolved and smarter tools have been developed, but people seem to have remained the same. Wardriving into a neighborhood would still produce the same results, maybe even better. Others wonder why they still have an Internet connection even if their cable modem is off. It turns out that they’re sharing with their neighbor’s bandwidth. On the other hand, the Pizza 4 Life trick could still be applicable. A user from YouTube even commented that he has done it hundreds of times. This just goes to show many are still unaware and that they could repeatedly fall victim to these kinds of tricks.
The video above is from the first episode of thebroken. From Wikipedia:
thebroken is an online video podcast/vidcast (or videocast), focusing on software cracking, computer intrusion, and other “questionable activities”. It is hosted by Kevin Rose and Dan Huard, with Ramzi as a regular comical feature, and geared toward anyone interested in computer security.
Social engineering trivia from Answers.com:
In a 2002 episode of the video podcast thebroken, host Kevin Rose demonstrated how to use social engineering to get “Free Pizza 4 Life”. The segment depicted Rose loitering outside of a San Francisco pizzeria, waiting for a random customer to walk in and place a take-out order. Once this happened, Rose followed the person into the store (as to appear that he was with the person), and took note of their name, phone number and pizza order (all information except for the actual pizza order was censored from the video). Rose left the pizzeria, and 30 minutes later, placed a phone call to the store’s manager. Acting as if he was in that customer’s party, Rose reported a complaint with the pizza, then negotiated with the manager to get a free new pizza in lieu of the bad one. The manager obliged, Rose returned to the store and successfully walked out with a free pizza.
July 14th, 2007 at 9:52
Wow! This might be useful. I am saving the video. BTW great links. I am little into hacking these days
July 14th, 2007 at 9:57
Thanks! I think there are 4 episodes of thebroken. The one I posted is the first one. Maybe YouTube has the complete episodes. Unfortunately, the show was discontinued. Kevin Rose has other businesses to take of now- Digg, Pownce, etc.
July 17th, 2007 at 2:43
I remember doing that when I was younger, and from time to time I still find unsecure wi-fi routers. Whenever someone asks me about that kind of stuff I like to show them these types of YouTube videos…
July 17th, 2007 at 4:38
My friend, who’s working with a tech-support company said he frequently receives calls about customers asking for assistance in securing their wireless routers. I don’t think these customers have even changed their router passwords when they first set-up their networks (weeks or months ago). They claim that their wireless networks are automatically set up after plugging in the router.
Default passwords + no encryption = a bunch of freeloaders outside.
May 28th, 2008 at 15:26
I remember doing that when I was younger, and from time to time I still find unsecure wi-fi routers.
July 29th, 2008 at 5:08
I remember doing that when I was younger, and from time to time I still find unsecure wi-fi routers
August 6th, 2008 at 23:14
Wow. I’ve always been ultra-paranoid about wireless security.
Even if you do use default router passwords, encryption is an absolute must, it’s scary that a lot of people even now have no idea how open they are!
August 7th, 2008 at 8:55
Thanx you gays, i changed my wireless pass. thanx
August 16th, 2008 at 0:25
thank you afterlight.