4 ms·

While plausible, it's very likely not worth the bother to crack this couple's wifi passphrase. For all this work it leak the attacker's general geographic area

While plausible, it's very likely not worth the bother to crack this couple's wifi passphrase. For all this work it leak the attacker's general geographic area anyway. More likely is that the ISP messed up their logs, or that they were incomplete. That happens more often than they would like to admit.

tomxor 5y ago
This is a real concern, especially in the age of carrier grade NAT. Vodafone (the families ISP), is a mobile ISP which dynamically pass IPs around like hot potatos - their monitoring solutions need to be far more sophisticated to keep accurate records... this feels a bit like the start of another Royal Mail "the computer is right" scenario but at a larger scale.
- worldofmatthew 5y ago
  Not just that, the default logging for almost all server software does not log ports or have second by second accurate timestamps. Often making it only possible to track down someone using a less popular website as the data will be too noisy without information on top websites.
geek_at 5y ago
Something similar (but not relating to CSAM) happened to me (though not the ISPs fault). I was on IRC and someone I have talked to a few times sent me a official looking link to the website of a local political party and it was a sub-folder that had indexing enabled and that's where they stored their backups. The dude then got in and published all usernames and hashed passwords on pastebin. He was using a VPN at the time, I wasn't.. The police took all my devices and kept them for a year until charges were dropped. Not a fun time. I wrote about it here -> https://blog.haschek.at/2015-that-not-so-awesome-time-the-police https://blog.haschek.at/2015-that-not-so-awesome-time-the-po...
- sumedh 5y ago
  You should submit that link as a new post.
  - 3np 5y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21992491 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21992491
jacoblambda 5y ago
While it is a small and unlikely reason, it's a succint explanation that can be used to explain away this entire clusterfuck of an incident. Doubly so putting the explanation with little wording to leave doubt should help the family get some level of normalcy. At least now they can point to an article in the BBC to explain when employers, coworkers, other parents, or staff at the school inevitably bring it up. It's not perfect but it's an easy explanation to put people's minds at ease and dissuade any notion of wrongdoing from this ridiculous incident which will undoubtedly follow them for at least the next decade or so if not the rest of their lives.
londons_explore 5y ago
Or there was malware or an open proxy on on one of their devices... Or they really were guilty...

tomxor 5y ago

This is a real concern, especially in the age of carrier grade NAT. Vodafone (the families ISP), is a mobile ISP which dynamically pass IPs around like hot potatos - their monitoring solutions need to be far more sophisticated to keep accurate records... this feels a bit like the start of another Royal Mail "the computer is right" scenario but at a larger scale.

worldofmatthew 5y ago
Not just that, the default logging for almost all server software does not log ports or have second by second accurate timestamps. Often making it only possible to track down someone using a less popular website as the data will be too noisy without information on top websites.

geek_at 5y ago

Something similar (but not relating to CSAM) happened to me (though not the ISPs fault). I was on IRC and someone I have talked to a few times sent me a official looking link to the website of a local political party and it was a sub-folder that had indexing enabled and that's where they stored their backups. The dude then got in and published all usernames and hashed passwords on pastebin. He was using a VPN at the time, I wasn't.. The police took all my devices and kept them for a year until charges were dropped. Not a fun time. I wrote about it here -> https://blog.haschek.at/2015-that-not-so-awesome-time-the-police https://blog.haschek.at/2015-that-not-so-awesome-time-the-po...

sumedh 5y ago
You should submit that link as a new post.
- 3np 5y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21992491 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21992491

jacoblambda 5y ago

While it is a small and unlikely reason, it's a succint explanation that can be used to explain away this entire clusterfuck of an incident. Doubly so putting the explanation with little wording to leave doubt should help the family get some level of normalcy. At least now they can point to an article in the BBC to explain when employers, coworkers, other parents, or staff at the school inevitably bring it up. It's not perfect but it's an easy explanation to put people's minds at ease and dissuade any notion of wrongdoing from this ridiculous incident which will undoubtedly follow them for at least the next decade or so if not the rest of their lives.

londons_explore 5y ago

Or there was malware or an open proxy on on one of their devices... Or they really were guilty...