Reply to post: Re: A doofus, with weak lawyers, but the law is broken

Re: A doofus, with weak lawyers, but the law is broken

> Sending dodgy emails from the university server? Don't they have internet cafes in Newcastle?

Ha. I wouldn't advise sending those from an Internet Café. These have CCTV now, and chances are that you could not disguise your connection very well, so even a throwaway webmail account will correctly stamp the IP and date.

> Or Tor?

That would work, although using TOR too much for unlawful purposes will ruin it for everyone (another problem entirely, but I thought I'd mention it anyway).

> Or free ports on the lan in an empty office?

That and a spectacularly incompetent IT dept., then. I've yet to see unused-but-active network sockets in empty offices. In most places even active in-use sockets are retricted to a single MAC adress. You can circumvent that, by cloning the MAC of the legit machine before unplugging it and using the socket, but it's hard to do it if it's not your machine, and a bit pointless if it is. You could set up some sort of covert router that would transparently allow the "leeched" machine to connect while allowing you to connect via wifi for example, but there's some night work involved, because you'll want to hide it very well. In the offices here for example I _could_ probably open the cabling duct, terminate the Cat5 a bit before the socket, put a passive splitter, reconnect one branch to the wall socket and the other to a very small wifi router (a hacked Fonera would fit, once stripped from its plastic casing, or a Pi with a USB wifi dongle).

Then I'd have to draw the power from somewhere. I'm guessing I'd derive cabling from the lights system wich is in the adjacent duct, because it's easy to turn off: I'd hate having to work on live mains, and I'm not sure I wouldn't expose the whole scheme if I tripped the mains by "inadvertently" spilling tea in a power plug on the same breaker. My pirate wifi would only be up while the lights are on, but that's probably enough: I can pass by, catch the wifi from the corridor and send my emails without even stopping (assuming the email is already typed and only needs to be sent). Of course I'd have to trick the network into accepting the SMTP connection (webmail is too easily traceable /leaks too much info), but that's doable.

Or, since I'd need to come in at night anyway, I could just come in, spoof the MAC, plug my laptop in, send the email and leave; but I would need to break back in each time I wanted to send an email, which is hardly safe, given the CCTV cameras in the corridors.

> Amateur.

Fair enough; but again, since you forgot an easy and (almost) safe way to do it (anonymous remailers), perhaps _you_ are the amateur ;-)

Man, does it feel like a Friday... it's gonna be a long week.