It's criminal, just like if your ISP notices you pirating stuff, they have to act on it or they can be prosecuted themselves. You are not supposed to use their internet for criminal activities. And yes packet sniffing is illegal, unless you own the network but even than it can be illegal.
Valuable and private info.. It could be anything from account passwords and names to ccredit card info.. The options are literally endless.
Do you know what exactly is illegal about it? Like is it considered theft? I know pirating laws only apply to distribution, so what crime is the downloader committing? How could it be illegal if you own the network? I could see if you were collecting information from users on your network without any kind of notice or permission, but that's illegal in itself regardless to sniffing. Not trying to argue, I'm just curious being a pre-law student and all.
OP, I'm very interested in learning more about computers and networks. What exactly is a port, how do you "poke around" in one, and what could you find?
Its like napalm for your hardrive! Why didn't you just get your programs before downloading music and movies? You could have just walked over to McDonalds and downloaded your programs there then you would have been safe when messing around with a hotels network. Important people/shady people usually stay at hotels so its more then a "I was just poking around open ports" issue. For all they know you were trying to match a room number to a name with their hotel logs. Edit: ^ To the poster above. Your local community college has some programming and computer classes. I'd start there until you get a basic knowledge of what you are doing and what you want to do. If you take the usual route and just download a bunch of programs without knowing whats going on in the backround the only thing you will find in an open port is someone who could mess your day/computer up, or you might just get the police called on you and get charged with a felony. Just saying you might want to be able to define port before you dive right in one.
Tons of shit, credit card details, email logins, facebook passwords. Anything and everything you do from googling, to viewing porn can be looked at. You're looking at information you are not supposed to look at. When one goes onto facebook or checks their email, they don't want people to know the passwords they use to login, etc... Because unless you inform the people using your network that, "HEY, I'm going to actively be sniffing your network and looking at the data you send." It's illegal, you're not supposed to do it. Yea that is very true, I did get lucky LOL. Your fucking joking right? Ever heard of google? If you can't even do that to learn this information yourself, you will probably just end up being the next skid who gets himself arrested. Yea Dban is fucking AWESOME!!! Well it was a day before I got on the plane and I had to dban, plus my drivers didn't install properly so I couldn't connect to the internet via wifi; This was all being done 2 hours before I had to leave, so I said fuck it.
[quote name='"OscarZetaAcosta"']You did it wrong...I poke around my school's network all the time, but I have programs that help me. You need some programs.[/quote] Programs such as?
Do you really think he's just going to tell you? You want to know what program? GO FUCKING LOOK FOR IT YOURSELF. Do some basic research ffs, if you bothered to use google you could have your answer within 10-20minutes. Why the fuck does everyone, especially in the infosec scene expect everyone to hand shit to them?
Nobody wants to know what they're doing or how to do it, they just want to be able to do it. So... people are just lazy. lol
[quote name='"dawnofwar"'] Do you really think he's just going to tell you? You want to know what program? GO FUCKING LOOK FOR IT YOURSELF. Do some basic research ffs, if you bothered to use google you could have your answer within 10-20minutes. Why the fuck does everyone, especially in the infosec scene expect everyone to hand shit to them?[/quote] I never said that I just wondered it's not like I'ma be doing it anytime soon I was just curious .I would but in mobile it would be difficult .
Unfortunately when it comes to the infosec scene, this gets people arrested and in jail for the rest of their lives. Not to mention it polutes the scene with a fuckton of skids. So it's difficult to type www.google.com/.ca and type "programs to anonymize yourself?" DAMN YO DAT SHITS HARD
[quote name='"dawnofwar"'] Unfortunately when it comes to the infosec scene, this gets people arrested and in jail for the rest of their lives. Not to mention it polutes the scene with a fuckton of skids. So it's difficult to type www.google.com/.ca and type "programs to anonymize yourself?" DAMN YO DAT SHITS HARD[/quote] Lol dude you don't even know lol,I was just curious tho I got better stuff to do
[quote name='"dawnofwar"'] Sarcasm detector is weak in this one.[/quote] I just wanted to see if I pissed you off lol,I knew your being sarcastic
Damn. Well, port scanning in and of itself isn't illegal here, though it does piss off the network admins. Definitely need to get yourself a livecd or a thumbdrive to boot from, and spoof your mac at least. I'd never do that shit on a hotel network over a hardwire connection though. There's really no way to refute it was you over a hard wire direct to your room.
1) I had to use my moms computer asI was forced to dban my regular computer. 2) A livecd or thumbdrive with an OS installed would do absolutely nothing to protect my self in this istuation. 3) Spoofing your mac address does nothing, you need to spoof the mac address of the actual router you are using. Plus it wouldn't matter, I was using the wifi I ahd to sign in with my hotel room # and my last name. 4) It was through wifi. Not to come across as arrogant or stuck up, but do you even know what you are talking about?