Weak Wi-Fi Password May Have Led UK Police to Bust an Innocent Couple

Slashdot reader esm88 shares the BBC's story about a couple who experienced 'a knock on the door from the police' investigating child abuse images posted online. 'The couple insisted they had nothing to do with it. But the next few months were 'utter hell' as they attempted to clear their names,' before their case was finally dropped in March:
In February, a conversation with a friend who worked in cyber-security alerted them to the possibility that their router, supplied by their broadband provider Vodafone, might hold clues to what had happened. They had not changed the default passwords for either the router itself or the admin webpage, leaving it susceptible to brute force attacks. 'We think of ourselves as competent users but we are not IT experts,' said Matthew. 'No-one told us to change the password and the setting up of the router didn't require us to go on to the admin menu, so we didn't.

'It came with a password, so we plugged it in and didn't touch anything.'

Ken Munro, a security consultant with Pen Test Partners, told the BBC that it can take 'a matter of minutes' for criminals to piggyback on insecure wireless connections... 'So what I guess has happened here, is that the hacker has cracked the wi-fi password and then made changes to the router configuration, so their illicit activities on the internet appear to be coming from the innocent party.' In March, when the couple's devices were returned and the case closed, the police officer assigned to liaise with them seemed to corroborate that unauthorised use of their wi-fi was to blame. But it couldn't be proved... The problem is industry-wide, points out Mr Munro.
'Internet service providers have started to improve matters to make these attacks harder, by putting unique passwords on each router. However, it will take years for all of the offending routers to be replaced,' he said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.