is cisco guest access secure?

detj

Reputable
Jun 18, 2014
2
0
4,510
dumb cop needs a little help here. someone at a specific IP is downloading pictures they should not be downloading. they have what appears to be an open wifi; however, when you click on it the Cisco guest access page prompts you for a password. can I assume with some reasonable level of certainty that the wifi network at this guy's house is secure and some neighbor isn't logging into his open wifi? thanks
 
Solution
Right. The ISP can only track it down to a particular account. That has nothing to do with 'who' is sitting at the keyboard.
Either the owner, another house member, or a neighbor or someone sitting in their car at the curb, sucking off their WiFi.

There is zero way for us out here to determine who or how. As said earlier, existence of a 'password' does not equal perfect security.

Please contact the local State Police or other network capable persons. The more you dick with it, the more the chain of custody may fall apart.

popatim

Titan
Moderator
odd. Seems a real cop would have established procedures to follow for these situations by now to my thinking. Like getting a Warrant for records from the ISP in question with which you can narrow it down to the specific pc thats doing the downloading. This still wont prove 'who' is doing the downloading though and you will need to focus on how to determine that. I suggest you get the state police involved since you appear to be out of your league already; perhaps you will even be able to get some training from them.
(no offense intended
 

detj

Reputable
Jun 18, 2014
2
0
4,510


thanks for all your sound advice buddy, but the ISP can't pinpoint the actual device downloading, just the subscriber for the IP (usually, MAC address sometimes, but not this time unfortunately). believe it or not, even the cops that do this all the time (me) are not computer nerds. we don't know all the answers all the time, but I'm not afraid to ask people that do. people are constantly trying to do things so that it makes it harder for us to figure out that they are downloading pictures of little kids. if you don't have a useful answer, don't answer. thanks
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Right. The ISP can only track it down to a particular account. That has nothing to do with 'who' is sitting at the keyboard.
Either the owner, another house member, or a neighbor or someone sitting in their car at the curb, sucking off their WiFi.

There is zero way for us out here to determine who or how. As said earlier, existence of a 'password' does not equal perfect security.

Please contact the local State Police or other network capable persons. The more you dick with it, the more the chain of custody may fall apart.
 
Solution

popatim

Titan
Moderator
everything on the net is recorded. of course the ISP gathers the mac addresses of the pc's. Though there are programs that can fake a mac address you should still get one from them.

And that was useful advice. Its obvious you don't have training for this and will just wind up contaminating the evidence or give them time to kill it so bring in the big guns and get it done right. I understand you want to catch this guy but giving them an out or chance to get away isn't a viable option IMO (they might move to my neighborhood) so put your macho away, call the staties or the feds (if the data crossed state lines) and get the jobs done right. Thats the important thing isn't it?

ps - if you get warrants for the equipment, be sure to grab the router(s). The device's that have logged on will have entries made into its internal log, mac address too on some, if not most, routers.