Geek uses packet sniffer to catch his girlfriend cheating

More details here:

http://www.lenholgate.com/archives/000638.html

I am sorry to hear of your problems with your girlfriend. I have been there and know a little of what it is like. Unfortunately for men there is less support then women have from their friends.

With my notebook I used AirSnare and Ethereal (in XP) to see if neighbors, etc., are bootlegging my WiFi (not to spy on my family). I had some suspicious activity so I now use WEP to stop it. The software combination worked quite well. I could monitor all the WiFi traffic. The router came with Windows software to log all traffic leaving the router if I wanted to do that.

I also log into my wireless router and check to see who is using it. I use a desktop running SuSE Linux and Firefox via Ethernet cable. I am nearly weaned from Windows. Unfortunately I cannot do my taxes with TurboTax yet in Linux.

Now that my SuSE 10.0 Linux on a HP notebook can use WiFi and WEP I now have all the family members using WEP (they use XP). FYI, a Linksys WPC11 ver 4 wireless adapter works well with this flavor of Linux right out of the box. I mention this as I tried numerous wireless cards until I found one that worked without a lot of technical skills that I don't have.

I now have many more neighbors due to housing construction behind my house. Also my equipment is on the second floor of a wood house. I discovered that the new wireless cards and routers can have a range of more than 100 meters so there are many houses within that radius. My estimate is at least 25 houses within that circle. I feel that router to router is possible so that radius could at least double. All the more reason to monitor and encrypt.

My step-daughter is typical pain in the rear and knows it all. When her mother mentioned that she was bootlegging a neighbor's WiFi at the apartment where she lives while at college I pointed out just how insecure her email letters to her boy friends were. Both her mother and she tried to jump on me for eavesdropping on her conversations at home (as if I really care--I never used the logging feature of the router).
The point of this is to show that WiFi that does not use encryption at least to the router is exposed to everyone using the above mentioned software. At the router the data is loggable.

So good luck in recovering from this breakup with your girl friend. Sometimes people just grow apart through nobody's fault.

So please be aware of the insecurity of WiFi. If I can monitor my system's activity then almost anyone can. I wonder if I should have never said a thing to my smart-ass step-daughter? Nah, 'cause her mother (and I) would have to pay her fines and lawyers' fees if she is caught stealing WiFi access.