
How to Use Your Cat to Hack Your Neighbor’s Wi-Fi - klunger
http://www.wired.com/2014/08/how-to-use-your-cat-to-hack-your-neighbors-wi-fi/?mbid=social_fb
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popctrl
1\. Make the collar hijack any wifi devices it can and use their CPUs to mine
dogecoin

2\. Use earnings to create more collars, attaching them to stray dogs

3\. Revel in your stray doge empire

~~~
ChuckMcM
"Honey! This stray dog has a USB drive attached to its collar, maybe its
information about the owner, plug it into your PC and see."

The evilness just makes me shudder. Next up a USB stick that has a rat treat
in it, when you push the stick into a USB port that pops the rat treat out of
the top. You train a bunch of rats and then leave the USB sticks around your
target's facility.

There are some fun fiction ideas in there, that is for sure.

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lucb1e
Sounds like... [http://www.jose-dogs-the-best-for-to-find-
wifi.net/](http://www.jose-dogs-the-best-for-to-find-wifi.net/)

~~~
sbarre
Amazing, I was totally fooled

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guelo
I leave my wifi open because I like being a nice neighbor. A little QoS and a
firewall for my home network, and you're free to connect.

~~~
callmeed
I've always wondered if leaving your WiFi open gives you plausible deniability
WRT to torrenting copyrighted material (should anyone ever come knocking).

~~~
prawks
AFAIK it's always been one of the bigger gray areas regarding pirating
copyrighted material. From what I've read it's still a "we have no formal
proof that people are prosecuted based on it, but we also have no proof that
they aren't/can't be".

Also, read
[https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/my_open_wirel...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/my_open_wireles.html)
as linked below in this thread.

~~~
lucb1e
It is from 2008 though, things have changed. Just today a domain was seized by
the UK govt on grounds of copyright infringement just because it was running a
proxy. In Austria someone was convicted for running a Tor exit node about a
month ago.

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cessor
I am interested in building a device like this (for other purposes and not for
cats), but I have no idea how to put the hardware together or where to start.
I have been thingking about bycicle security a lot lately and a tiny GPS + X
(gsm, wifi, etc.) might me useful.

Could someone point me in the right direction? Where do I start?

~~~
elif
I love this thing. full computer, i.e. install ubuntu and go, yet it's way
smaller and more powerful than a raspberry pi.

[https://store.gumstix.com/index.php/products/620/](https://store.gumstix.com/index.php/products/620/)

the problem you will run into is wifi eats a lot of power and makes a lot of
heat

~~~
cessor
Thanks, I will have a look at it!

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ww520
OT: Actually a useful device for cats would be a collar that tracks GPS
location and answers its location when pinged. Then they can be easier found
and won't get lost.

~~~
georgemcbay
Outdoor cats generally don't really get lost, they get flattened by cars or
eaten by coyotes depending upon where you live, neither of which a GPS is
going to help with. On rare occasions they get snatched up by animal control.

For anyone with a cat, I highly recommend getting it microchipped (in case
they get out and happen to fall into that last category) and making it indoor-
only. The average lifespan of an outdoor cat is ~3-6 years.

~~~
joshschreuder
I'm pleased to hear this advice, we got a cat a year ago and she has been
indoor-only since we got her. We do let her out on a harness with us alongside
to sniff around outdoors, and she loves it (and is sad to return inside). I
feel somewhat vindicated in making her indoor-only.

~~~
georgemcbay
That's awesome that you bring her out on a harness. I wish my cat would let me
do that, but she won't; she's pretty anxious in general (adopted her when she
was 2 and she had been in the shelter twice already) and still has a lot of
issues (she's very loving/lovable, but very afraid of strangers, especially
males).

Her anxiousness stops her from wanting to run off though, which is really,
really rare for a cat, so I hang out with her on the deck in front of my place
a lot so she can be "outside" but in a safe way and she doesn't leave the deck
area (prior to her I wouldn't have believed this of any cat, because I grew up
with some cats and all of them would attempt to run out if given the chance).

IMO indoor cats can have a perfectly fulfilled life if their owners put in
some effort (regularly engage them in play that uses their built-in-hunting
instincts, mine loves to chase laser pointers and play with a bird feather on
a string thing, the one I use is called "Da Bird", but I'm sure other brands
exist).

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hyborg787
Train a small animal such as a ferret to hit the WPS button on any popular
access point and let it loose in their home?

~~~
projct
No need when there is Reaver: [https://code.google.com/p/reaver-
wps/](https://code.google.com/p/reaver-wps/)

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hayksaakian
Am I the only one seeing this?

[http://www.imgur.com/ukYNQFL.png](http://www.imgur.com/ukYNQFL.png)

Makes the article totally unreadable on chro.a beta for android (nexus 5)

~~~
shurcooL
I didn't see that problem.
[http://virtivia.com:27080/1omz54cqhj8ms.png](http://virtivia.com:27080/1omz54cqhj8ms.png)

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a8da6b0c91d
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.

~~~
pconner
This requires you to trust the VPN, though.

~~~
yutah
And your VPN's ISP

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marcoms
What a beautiful cat

~~~
sliverstorm
This is relevant! If the cat is hideous, it will not be accepted by your
neighbor and invited in for tuna. Step one to covert espionage!

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MichailP
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.

~~~
Piskvorrr
1\. it's a WiFi _client_ , in other words, mostly _receiver_.

2\. even if it were an AP, _transmitting_ at max power for hours, it would
give out very limited power (zero, give or take measurement errors).

3\. you're starting from assumption "wifi baaaad" without anything to support
that claim; if it were a nuclear device, I'd see a cause for concern.
[citation-sorely-needed] for this assumption.

~~~
sp332
You know wifi operates in the microwave band, right? Microwave ovens operate
in the 2.4 GHz band. Wifi is limited to 1 W total power output, but it's not
nothing.

Edit: More to the point, it's a good question, even if the answer is "no."

~~~
upofadown
There is nothing special about the use of 2.4 GHz for ovens. It is just where
the regulations arbitrarily put that particular ISM band. Microwave ovens can
work on 900 MHz as well.

~~~
sp332
Sure. And wearing a 900MHz one around your neck probably isn't a good idea
either.

~~~
commandar
Based on what?

~~~
sp332
It gets warm.

