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How to Use Your Cat to Hack Your Neighbor’s Wi-Fi

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Re: How to Use Your Cat to Hack Your Neighbor’s Wi-Fi

#31

Post by Piskvorrr »

sp332 wrote: post #23
Piskvorrr wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Zero, give or take measurement errors." As related to the GP's assumption "seems a bit harsh to the cat" - in other words, "why are you microwaving your cat, you monster!!111!", not as related to data transfer. Edited to add the direct quote.

That wasn't an assumption, that was the question .

Oh, okay, that makes sense; I have misread it as a rhetorical question, then.

The answer is "no, your cat won't get its brains cooked, not even after prolonged exposure" - there's not even enough juice in the battery to do that :)

Re: How to Use Your Cat to Hack Your Neighbor’s Wi-Fi

#32

Post by mikeash »

MichailP wrote: post #2

What about level of non ionizing radiation the cat is exposed to? Cats head is always in near field of antenna, seems a bit harsh to the cat.

How big is the battery, and how long does it last? That'll put a firm upper bound (and, I imagine, a quite small one) on how much energy the cat could be absorbing from this.

Re: How to Use Your Cat to Hack Your Neighbor’s Wi-Fi

#33

Post by dethstar »

a8da6b0c91d wrote: post #12

Just use unencrypted wifi but do anything that matters over a good VPN. Assume you can't trust your ISP and local network anyway. All this moaning about wifi security doesn't make sense to me.

I wanted to trust my ISP. Then they inserted an ad when I was browsing HN.

I changed their domain in my hosts file to localhost, changed dns and started looking into vpn.

Re: How to Use Your Cat to Hack Your Neighbor’s Wi-Fi

#35

Post by MichailP »

MichailP wrote: post #2

What about level of non ionizing radiation the cat is exposed to? Cats head is always in near field of antenna, seems a bit harsh to the cat.

Thanks for the comments. I am not familiar with WiFi protocol, so I didn't know about amount of time/power antenna spends receiving/transmitting, and how the sniffing works (ie it seems to be entirely passive operation?). My karma has gone to hell ;P

Re: How to Use Your Cat to Hack Your Neighbor’s Wi-Fi

#36

Post by dspillett »

dethstar wrote: post #33
a8da6b0c91d wrote: post #12

Just use unencrypted wifi but do anything that matters over a good VPN. Assume you can't trust your ISP and local network anyway. All this moaning about wifi security doesn't make sense to me.

I wanted to trust my ISP. Then they inserted an ad when I was browsing HN. I changed their domain in my hosts file to localhost, changed dns and started looking into vpn.

It might be worth naming and shaming the ISP, so others can avoid it, if you are sure that it was definitely them and not some form of local malware infection, especially if you have some sort of evidence recorded from the incident (or can collect some by repeating it).

Re: How to Use Your Cat to Hack Your Neighbor’s Wi-Fi

#37

Post by mattkevan »

MichailP wrote: post #2

What about level of non ionizing radiation the cat is exposed to? Cats head is always in near field of antenna, seems a bit harsh to the cat.

Maybe I should have a stern talk with our cat about his health - he likes to sleep on the wifi box as it's nice and warm.

So far the only ways we've found to block the cat also block the wifi.

Re: How to Use Your Cat to Hack Your Neighbor’s Wi-Fi

#39

Post by dethstar »

dspillett wrote: post #36
dethstar wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wanted to trust my ISP. Then they inserted an ad when I was browsing HN. I changed their domain in my hosts file to localhost, changed dns and started looking into vpn.

It might be worth naming and shaming the ISP, so others can avoid it, if you are sure that it was definitely them and not some form of local malware infection, especially if you have some sort of evidence recorded from the incident (or can collect some by repeating it).

I'm from Mexico so it might not be as useful but my ISP is Cablevision. The only proof I've got is that it was an iframe inserted into non related pages from their server and for a specific offer they were making. I really doubt it was any form of local malware.

Re: How to Use Your Cat to Hack Your Neighbor’s Wi-Fi

#40

Post by audeyisaacs »

MichailP wrote: post #2

What about level of non ionizing radiation the cat is exposed to? Cats head is always in near field of antenna, seems a bit harsh to the cat.

There's really no reason to be concerned about that.

I'd be significantly more worried(ie: actually worried) about a mishap with that gumstick cell, which looks like it could be(edit: probably is) a lipo.

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