Hackmuch?

Every now and then my home network goes crazy - but only those machines wirelessly connected to it. Apparently someone is saturating the bandwidth with attempts to brute-force a connection to the WAP, despite being encrypted.

I'm not too surprised, honestly. Before I rerouted off the default ports for SSH I was averaging 60,000 unauthorized login attempts a week according to the logs.

This one feels a little more personal though, because by definition proximity has to be involved. The attempt could be coming from another compromised machine within range though - anything with wireless. Maybe even a WAP itself, if it supports bridging. I could still be feeling the effects of scum from far off places.

Then again, I can also detect a WAP in range whose SSID has been changed to "r00t3d-by-ex0de," so it's anybody's guess.

Either way, I've been the victim of impersonal fraud in the past and I can expect it to continue. Being a faceless number in the world at large helps to depersonalize and automate the crime, identities stolen and lives ruined with a few pushes of the button and some social engineering (it doesn't even need to be very bright, people are just unsuspecting and desperate).

I should probably take this as a note and be more paranoid generally, checking my credit history regularly, etc. I will, but I'll also be annoyed while I'm at it.