People leeching off my bro's ADSL connection?

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We've just received the bill from the ADSL provider and it mentions 94 euro additional costs in national phone calls. The calls (1 min/ 16 min / 23 min, so varying duration)tend to happen during weekends and holidays when my brother and one other roommate are at home and not in Brussels (where they have the connection). My bro says he leaves his compy on stand-by when he isn't there. There are only a couple numbers that have been phoned, of which the main one says "please enter your code" when we try to phone it. One of the others turned out to be a regular mobile phone number with an actual person answering. The person in question spoke French, which is a language neither my bro nor his one roommate (the one that also goes home at weekends and holidays) are very fluent in, but is the mothertongue of roommate nr. 3.

Now, we know that there has been trouble in the past with roommate nr. 3. It is said that he simply plugged his phone into one of the guys's modems and proceeded to make long-distance phone calls. However, we don't want to accuse anyone just like that, so I was wondering whether there were any other possible explanations for this weirdness.

 

The explanation is as plain as the nose on you r face! Its the roomate #3. Just have you rbrother unplug his modem and take it with him when he goes home on weekends, problem solved.

 

I'll have to agree with Brallrock. Even though it's possible that someone is using the modem, the solution is most likely the Roommate number #3
And even if it's not, removing the modem should solve the problem anyways.

 

Can't see any different explanation, either. Certainly, someone else could have plugged in, but I doubt that. And it doesn't look like anything else than someone plugging in (not a dialling virus or anything like that, I think). You could phone the French person and ask if he or she knows roommate #3. Try removing the modem or perhaps recording what happens around the computer.

 

I forgot to mention it's wireless. Stupid me.

Anyway, the phone calls that require you to punch in a code are Internet connections, I guess. The ones with the people answering are telephone convos.

Maybe it's a combination of people/a person downloading stuff and crossing the data limit which caused the huge bill and nr. 3 phoning people, which, if not for the other person leeching, would have stayed within the normal limits of the subscription and thus would've gone unnoticed.

Maybe it's nr. 3 both making phone calls and hacking. He's an informatics student so I assume he knows how to do it. But that would mean that he performed actions that could incriminate him at least with regard to the actual phone calls, which would be stupid.

Can you make phone calls on other people's connection without physically plugging a telephone into their modem?

The French-speaking person was not very cooperative.

Either way, it turns out that it's nigh impossible to trace the person that made the connections to the Internet, so looks like we'll have to pay (300 euro, it turns out, not 94 :s).

At the moment, bro's got a hangover, but he'll go to Brussels tomorrow to unplug all associated devices.

This is why I love cables.

 

Yep, those with code are likely Internet connections, especially if they cost as much as local calls.

Theoretically yes, but I doubt a typical IT student would know how to, and I don't know about any programs to do that.

Crap. Looks like someone's leeching those connections.

 

Well, if this is the case, basically anyone with a wireless network card could connect to the modem if it wasn't set up correctly (doesn't have to be the roommate, can also be the neighbors).

Just make sure the modem only allows certain MAC-addresses to access it (which would be your bro's laptop and anyone else he allows to connect to his modem), and the login/password isn't admin/admin (it's surprising how many people don't change the default settings).

You could also log on at random times in the weekend to see if anybody is connected to the modem.

 

I would just like to point out, that this does not help anything against anyone who wants to connect to it and has a very basic understanding of networking.

 

And are you going to enlighten us why this is?

People who are trying to break into something (whether digitally or not) often take the easiest option. If you have mediocre protection and your neighbor has non at all, they're probably going to your neighbor first.

 

Because you can find out all the MAC-addresses that are currently communicating with the Access Point in a few seconds. Then you wait until the computer stops using the wireless connection and simply spoof your own MAC-address to the same as the victim had. That is, if no additional security is used and if we were discussing wireless here...

 

Thank for the info.

 

Never trust the French!

 

Very smart comment Duffin.

 

Erod is correct. if we are discussing wireless here, allowing certain MAC addresses is not enough security.

WEP encryption isn't either, since packet sniffers and other tools can sniff WEP encryption keys.

The only way to really secure wireless is WPA or preferrably WPA2 and using strong passphrases.

 

One option haven't come up yet.. turn the wlan off and hook the laptop on wire. This however is doesn't work for me since my only phone plug is next to my front door. But in the end I don't need to plug my modem to wall anymore because I got rid of my non-working adsl and put my internet straight through my cellphone.

 

There is another posibility. My friend inadvertantly downloaded (or so he said) a program that dialed numbers from his computer using an internet connection. That ran up a ton of charges on his service.

 

It's called a dialer.

And that is not a bad suggestion, Elios.

I have removed several of those nasties from friends and customers PC's...

But dialers usually doesn't call cell phones or numbers with an access code. They go after premium rate phone numbers.