Iron Fist

Perhaps I was a little too hasty in hosing my anonymous neighbor the other day. Apparently he or she may know a little something, since I came home last night and fired up my computer, cackling as usual at the thought of “borrowing” some more of someone else’s broadband, only to discover that the dude had set up encryption on his network.

Not an especially difficult task: the ability to do so is built into most wireless routers. This guy just hadn’t bothered to do so. Something must have tipped him.

Maybe it was the loud bursts of maniacal laughter coming from my apartment in the middle of the night, as I yelled, “I hope you aren’t paying by the packet, sucka-ass!” Or maybe it was the way I’d get off the elevator and loudly announce, “Oh yeah, one of you is my broadband bitch!”

Or maybe it was just that I got greedy and decided to run Bit Torrent all morning yesterday, rather than waiting to let it run all night like I usually do, and he or she noticed the immense amount of network traffic that choked their own websurfing to a crawl.

Still, it was a good run. I estimate that I probably moved 2 GB of data over their connection over the course of the last six days or so, between my torrents and all the streaming video and emails and surfing I did, just for kicks.

So, hat’s off to you, whoever you are. Maybe this will be a good opportunity for me to try out WEPcrack.