# Morons ... surrounded by morons **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [July 14, 2011, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morons-surrounded-by-morons/589038 "2011-07-14T18:24:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morons-surrounded-by-morons/589038/1 "2011-07-14T18:24:33Z")
> **[Wi-Fi–Hacking Neighbor From Hell Sentenced to 18 Years](https://www.wired.com/2011/07/hacking-neighbor-from-hell/)** > > A Minnesota hacker prosecutors described as a "depraved criminal" was handed an 18-year prison term Tuesday for unleashing a vendetta of cyberterror that turned his neighbors' lives into a living nightmare. This neighbor hacks your wifi, does nasty shit with it, and you _don’t_ go wired only? What the fuck dude? Are you a moron or something? Is being able to wander around with a laptop worth the bullshit the psychotic neighbor is doing? Sorry, that is just dumb as a box of fucking rocks. And FWIW, we do not do wireless at casa aru … a wired router comes with the cable internet account and we are too cheap to want to bother buying a wireless router. ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morons-surrounded-by-morons/589038/2 "2011-07-14T18:26:28Z")
Agree…and he is a dick of the highest degree, but for the neighbors to report him to the cops for kissing his four year old on the lips was dickish, too. It doesn’t at all justify his reaction, but…assholes all around. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morons-surrounded-by-morons/589038/3 "2011-07-14T18:29:25Z")
> [@Anaamika](#): > > Agree…and he is a dick of the highest degree, but for the neighbors to report him to the cops for kissing his four year old on the lips was dickish, too. It doesn’t at all justify his reaction, but…assholes all around. The four year old was the son of the victims, not the perp. ---
**Author:** ![Moonlitherial](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4bbf92/32.png) [@Moonlitherial](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moonlitherial)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morons-surrounded-by-morons/589038/4 "2011-07-14T18:30:01Z")
> [@Anaamika](#): > > Agree…and he is a dick of the highest degree, but for the neighbors to report him to the cops for kissing his four year old on the lips was dickish, too. It doesn’t at all justify his reaction, but…assholes all around. Just a clarification they reported him for kissing THEIR 4yr old on the lips. Not his kid. Based on his wacked out response it seems like it was the smart thing to do. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morons-surrounded-by-morons/589038/5 "2011-07-14T18:32:20Z")
I dunno. Sounds like once the neighbours cottoned on that someone was hacking them, they & their company laid a trap for the hacker - which worked. If they had just switched to wired-only, the hacker could have attacked them some other, less detectable way. > [@](#): > > After the husband explained to his law office superiors that he had no idea what was happening, his bosses hired a law firm that examined his network and discovered that an “unknown” device had access to it. With Kostolnik’s permission, they installed a packet sniffer on his network to try and get to the bottom of the incidents. > > Then, in May 2009, the Secret Service showed up at Kostolnik’s office to ask about several threatening e-mails sent from his Yahoo account, and traced to his IP address, that were addressed to Biden and other politicians. The subject line of one e-mail read: “This is a terrorist threat! Take this seriously.” > > “I swear to God I’m going to kill you!,” part of the message to Biden said. > > A forensics computer investigator working for Kostolnik’s law firm examined the packet logs, and found the e-mail sessions sending the threats. In the data surrounding the threatening traffic, they found traffic containing Ardolf’s name and Comcast account . ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morons-surrounded-by-morons/589038/6 "2011-07-14T18:33:36Z")
> [@Anaamika](#): > > Agree…and he is a dick of the highest degree, but for the neighbors to report him to the cops for kissing his four year old on the lips was dickish, too. It doesn’t at all justify his reaction, but…assholes all around. Again, I dunno. It was the neighbour’s own kid, not the guy’s, and the guy _did_ turn out to be a wackadoodle. ---
**Author:** ![Moonlitherial](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4bbf92/32.png) [@Moonlitherial](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moonlitherial)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morons-surrounded-by-morons/589038/7 "2011-07-14T18:34:09Z")
Too late for edit but first, damn you **Runner Pat**! Beaten by a minute 😉 Re the title of the OP - there are ways to adequately secure wireless to prevent this level of hacking but it appears that once they knew what was happening they left it in place to gather evidence not for convenience. In their position I’d be afraid that shutting off that avenue of revenge would drive him to do something worse. Better to suffer through it til the police were able to gather enough evidence to arrest him. ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morons-surrounded-by-morons/589038/8 "2011-07-14T18:35:37Z")
So whose kid was it again? 😉 Sorry, I misread that. In that case, I retract my prior statement. ---
**Author:** ![UncleRojelio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/unclerojelio/32/3160_2.png) [@UncleRojelio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleRojelio)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morons-surrounded-by-morons/589038/9 "2011-07-14T18:45:59Z")
You know this internet thing has gone too far when the neighbor’s 4 year old hacks your wireless network in order to save the vice-president’s life. ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morons-surrounded-by-morons/589038/10 "2011-07-14T19:09:15Z")
> [@Anaamika](#): > > Agree…and he is a dick of the highest degree… More than a dick, he appears to be a true psychopath. Most notably, he failed to recognize the risk of being caught, which explains the _incredible_ wealth of evidence (see OP’s link, last few paragraphs of article) that was found when his home was searched - evidence of criminal wrongdoing in the present case, as well as previous cases. Moreover, despite the enormous pile of evidence against him, he rejected the plea deal that would have netted him a mere two-year sentence. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morons-surrounded-by-morons/589038/11 "2011-07-14T20:14:29Z")
> [@Machine\_Elf](#): > > More than a dick, he appears to be a true psychopath. Most notably, he failed to recognize the risk of being caught, which explains the _incredible_ wealth of evidence (see OP’s link, last few paragraphs of article) that was found when his home was searched - evidence of criminal wrongdoing in the present case, as well as previous cases. Moreover, despite the enormous pile of evidence against him, he rejected the plea deal that would have netted him a mere two-year sentence. He was trying to frame someone for child porn, which made him guilty of scrounging around and reposting child porn. I am very glad they slammed the book on him. Bet he doesn’t survive long in the slammer … he is going to piss off the wrong person! ---
**Author:** ![LurkerInNJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ed655f/32.png) [@LurkerInNJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LurkerInNJ)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morons-surrounded-by-morons/589038/12 "2011-07-14T20:25:33Z")
> [@Moonlitherial](#): > > Just a clarification they reported him for kissing THEIR 4yr old on the lips. Not his kid. > > Based on his wacked out response it seems like it was the smart thing to do. No doubt he’s unbalanced, but I’d give him a pass on the kissing a 4 year old until I saw it on tape or learned the full circumstances. The news story I read said the kid wandered into his yard and he brought him back. I can totally see a 4 year old wanting to give someone a bye bye kiss. If he grabbed the kid and tried to give him some tongue, well, that a whole different story. ---
**Author:** ![Rachellelogram](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rachellelogram/32/8689_2.png) [@Rachellelogram](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rachellelogram)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morons-surrounded-by-morons/589038/13 "2011-07-14T21:15:45Z")
> [@aruvqan](#): > > [http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/07/hacking-neighbor-from-hell/](http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/07/hacking-neighbor-from-hell/) > > This neighbor hacks your wifi, does nasty shit with it, and you _don’t_ go wired only? What the fuck dude? Are you a moron or something? Is being able to wander around with a laptop worth the bullshit the psychotic neighbor is doing? > > Sorry, that is just dumb as a box of fucking rocks. > > And FWIW, we do not do wireless at casa aru … a wired router comes with the cable internet account and we are too cheap to want to bother buying a wireless router. Some house layouts do not allow you to go wired. It’s not just about laptops, but about multiple desktop computers in multiple rooms (which these days is quite common). I would KILL (many, many dozens of spiders) to go wired, as I’m a gamer and wireless is a smidge slower and a lot less reliable than a wired highspeed connection. Unfortunately, I’m renting in a ranch house. It’s so goddamn spread out, since everything’s on one floor, that my 100 foot ethernet cable doesn’t reach from my room to the family room, where the internet is housed. And if a 100-foot ethernet cable isn’t long enough, wireless it must be. Growing up, I lived in a large two story home+basement. There’s no way even a 300 foot cord would have stretched from the top floor (where we had the computer and the internet hookup) to the basement, where my stepdad’s brother lived. It couldn’t be routed through the windows, because the basement windows were those super-thick glass cubes. Wifi or nothing. BTW, right now I have 2wire, which yes is very shitty, but the hardware for it comes with a wireless router. So you don’t have to go out of your way to buy an extra router for it. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morons-surrounded-by-morons/589038/14 "2011-07-14T21:23:22Z")
> [@LurkerInNJ](#): > > No doubt he’s unbalanced, but I’d give him a pass on the kissing a 4 year old until I saw it on tape or learned the full circumstances. The news story I read said the kid wandered into his yard and he brought him back. I can totally see a 4 year old wanting to give someone a bye bye kiss. If he grabbed the kid and tried to give him some tongue, well, that a whole different story. It could be totally innocent or it could be really suspicious, depending on circumstances, sure. Nothing more annoying than non-sexual affection towards kids being misread by the paranoid and made a big deal of. However … in this case, the guy did in fact turn out to be a twister. That makes me suspect that whatever the parents saw was in fact pretty suspicious. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morons-surrounded-by-morons/589038/15 "2011-07-14T21:30:32Z")
> [@rachelellogram](#): > > Some house layouts do not allow you to go wired. It’s not just about laptops, but about multiple desktop computers in multiple rooms (which these days is quite common). I would KILL (many, many dozens of spiders) to go wired, as I’m a gamer and wireless is a smidge slower and a lot less reliable than a wired highspeed connection. Unfortunately, I’m renting in a ranch house. It’s so goddamn spread out, since everything’s on one floor, that my 100 foot ethernet cable doesn’t reach from my room to the family room, where the internet is housed. And if a 100-foot ethernet cable isn’t long enough, wireless it must be. > > BTW, right now I have 2wire, which yes is very shitty, but the hardware for it comes with a wireless router. So you don’t have to go out of your way to buy an extra router for it. We ran a 140 foot custom line out to the top floor of the barn for the roomie, and our entire house is 20x40 so inside the house isn’t a problem either. My brother has a line run to his second floor bedroom from the basement. I previously helped him wire his rental house for telephone [well it was 25 years ago] without punching extra holes in the wall. Just depends on how badly you want to go wire. I was _really_ good with snaking wire.🙂 Cat5 will do 300 feet. I still have the endy bits, crimper and half a spool … ---
**Author:** ![Greg\_Charles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/839c29/32.png) [@Greg\_Charles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Greg_Charles)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morons-surrounded-by-morons/589038/16 "2011-07-14T21:34:16Z")
> [@aruvqan](#): > > [http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/07/hacking-neighbor-from-hell/](http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/07/hacking-neighbor-from-hell/) > > This neighbor hacks your wifi, does nasty shit with it, and you _don’t_ go wired only? What the fuck dude? Are you a moron or something? Is being able to wander around with a laptop worth the bullshit the psychotic neighbor is doing? > > Sorry, that is just dumb as a box of fucking rocks. > > And FWIW, we do not do wireless at casa aru … a wired router comes with the cable internet account and we are too cheap to want to bother buying a wireless router. Good points! Also if the neighbor hacks into their cell phones, the family should get a land line and never use his mobile number at home. And if the neighbor breaks in, the family should just cement the doors and windows shut and never go out again. Why rely on law enforcement when you can just change your lifestyle and wallow in fear instead? Of course, it seems like wi-fi is a bigger part of my lifestyle than it is yours. ---
**Author:** ![FoieGrasIsEvil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foiegrasisevil/32/16638_2.png) [@FoieGrasIsEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FoieGrasIsEvil)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morons-surrounded-by-morons/589038/17 "2011-07-14T21:35:07Z")
> [@aruvqan](#): > > We ran a 140 foot custom line out to the top floor of the barn for the roomie, and our entire house is 20x40 so inside the house isn’t a problem either. My brother has a line run to his second floor bedroom from the basement. I previously helped him wire his rental house for telephone [well it was 25 years ago] without punching extra holes in the wall. Just depends on how badly you want to go wire. I was _really_ good with snaking wire.🙂 > > Cat5 will do 300 feet. I still have the endy bits, crimper and half a spool … Your entire house is 20x40 feet? That’s uh…really small! ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morons-surrounded-by-morons/589038/18 "2011-07-14T23:40:58Z")
You think an 8000 sq. ft. house is small? Based on what I found when I looked it up, that’s a typical 5-6 bedroom 5-6 bath home. Sure, I guess it’s not big, but it sure doesn’t seem “really small,” either. ---
**Author:** ![Shmendrik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Shmendrik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shmendrik)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morons-surrounded-by-morons/589038/19 "2011-07-14T23:50:10Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > You think an 8000 sq. ft. house is small? Based on what I found when I looked it up, that’s a typical 5-6 bedroom 5-6 bath home. Sure, I guess it’s not big, but it sure doesn’t seem “really small,” either. 1. ---
**Author:** ![Antinor01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecae2f/32.png) [@Antinor01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Antinor01)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morons-surrounded-by-morons/589038/20 "2011-07-14T23:53:37Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > You think an 8000 sq. ft. house is small? Based on what I found when I looked it up, that’s a typical 5-6 bedroom 5-6 bath home. Sure, I guess it’s not big, but it sure doesn’t seem “really small,” either. 20x40 would be 800 not 8000. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morons-surrounded-by-morons/589038.md?page=2)