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# Hacker : This evening I brought my laptop home to work on a few documents and my e-mail backlog. I intended to work offline and sync up in the morning when I get back to work. However, as I was working, my laptop automatically detected and connected to a wireless network. This happens pretty regularly, as I've mentionned here before. The signal is usually too weak to be considered reliable, but sometimes it maintains its strength long enough to do something useful.

For some reason, when I saw the icon flash telling me that I was connected to the wireless network, I thought I would see if I could establish a VPN connection to McGill's network. I headed over to Network Connections.... and noticed a few shared folders that are usually not there:

\\ComputerName\c
\\ComputerName\SharedDocs

I double-clicked on the 'c' folder, and sure enough, I was browsing my neighbor's hard drive. I closed the window, touching nothing. I then double-checked my own laptop to make sure all my file sharing and doors were locked down tight (they were), then got back to work. (I was tempted to leave a txt file letting them know their PC is wide open, but that would most likely just cause more problems.)

I've read about this kind of zero-security setup many times, but it was the first time I encounted it myself. Scary to think about how many other people have unknowingly opened their PC's when they clicked through their wireless router's install process. (FWIW, the reason I didn't buy a wireless router for our home was that I didn't want to spend the time and energy necessary to make sure our home network stayed secure.)