Unsecured Wi-Fi router brings federal agents, assault rifles on early morning visit

Buffalo homeowner's hijacked router used by alleged child pornographer

By John Cox on Mon, 04/25/11 - 9:17am.

A Buffalo homeowner found himself facedown on the floor of his house, looking up a group of federal agents, who were looking at him over gun barrels. They were executing a warrant alleging he was downloading reams of child pornography over the Internet. He was baffled.

The agents confiscated the homeowner's computer and his and his wife's iPhones. After three days of analysis, the agents concluded the couple was innocent, except for being "guilty" of not protecting the wireless connection to the router, according to the Associated Press story. The agents eventually discovered that it was a neighbor in a nearby apartment who was doing the downloading, having hijacked the homeowner's router, which lacked password protection.

The agents had tracked down the IP address of the homeowner's router, which was being used for the pornography downloads by an online user named Doldrum. Additional research then revealed that Doldrum was also using two other IP addresses, from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Both were accessed using a secure token, which the university said was assigned to a student, John Luchetti. His address showed that he lived in an apartment next door to the Buffalo man's home. Federal agents arrested Luchetti on March 17, charging him with distributing child pornography. He has pleaded not guilty.

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