Could someone be hacking into our internet?

mamazaac

For a few days at the beginning of March, we had extra high download on our internet. I am trying to find a way of comparing our internet history with what our internet provider says was used and when (see separate post) to see if it is something we have inadvertently downloaded, but I am concerned that someone may have been hacking into our internet - is that easy to do even when we are password protected? Other than changing the password is there anything I can do to prevent this, as if they have got around the password once then presumably could easily get around it again even if I changed it.

Many thanks in advance for any help.

Pont

I'd be interested in any replies to the above. I also had unusually high useage in early March - so much so I had to pay an extra fiver because I'd gone over our limit. We are usually way under the 10 GB limit. I don't recall using the internet any more than usual, no giant downloads etc, can't even blame the kids as they weren't here on the days when the high useage was recorded!

kwikbreaks

There was a Win 7 service pack recently - possibly that was to blame if you have Win 7 and have set it to auto update although it wasn't huge.

Most hacking is just casual stealing of bandwidth from totally unsecured WiFi APs which are very common. If you have WEP it is possible it was hacked but unlikely. Changing to WPA2 using a secure (non-dictionary) password is the best protection other than turning WiFi off completely.

mamazaac

Pont wrote: »

I'd be interested in any replies to the above. I also had unusually high useage in early March - so much so I had to pay an extra fiver because I'd gone over our limit. We are usually way under the 10 MB limit. I don't recall using the internet any more than usual, no giant downloads etc, can't even blame the kids as they weren't here on the days when the high useage was recorded!

That's quite a coincidence - who is your ISP? Wondering if it is madasafish like mine?

Goldielocks

Do you know what level of security you have on your router?
WEP is quite basic and easy to hack these days. WPA2 is more secure, it can still be hacked but someone would have to make quite a concerted and timely effort to do so, which is unlikely.

Pont

mamazaac wrote: »

That's quite a coincidence - who is your ISP? Wondering if it is madasafish like mine?

Plusnet here.

chippy2u

mamazaac wrote: »

That's quite a coincidence - who is your ISP? Wondering if it is madasafish like mine?

Probably O2. They did that to me and a lot of other people( see other threads on this site).

RussJK

Run the suite at Gibson Research's Shields Up! service for starters, and it will point out any major security holes.

You should have a look through your router security logs, it might show if other users have been on your (I'm assuming) wireless network. Unless you have installed software that measures all outgoing data on your computer, then you can't really know what your own usage has been.

Also, follow advice from others about listing fully your security setup: encryption (WEP, WPA, WPA2, etc), how good your pre-shared key is, etc.

esuhl

There are two possibilities:
1) an external person is using your Internet connection
2) software on one of your PCs is using a lot of bandwidth

Your router will have a password to restrict access to its web server (i.e. configuration settings pages). Make sure you have changed this.

Also, your wireless interface should be encrypted and password protected. WEP encryption is crackable within minutes. WPA or WPA2 (which is better) is safe enough if you choose a long password.

You might also want to run antivirus/malware scans just to make sure that there's no "dodgy" software using your bandwidth (probably unlikely that malware would use a lot, but you never know).

Have you been streaming/downloading a lot of video content? I seem to remember that an hour's iPlayer content is about 600MB... Or is anyone in the house downloading a large number of (ahem) Linux distributions, perhaps using BitTorrent...?

Some applications (such as BitTorrent and Spotify, I think) will upload data if you leave them running in the background. It might be an idea to see what applications you have running to see if there's anything that could be doing that.

spannerzone

Don't forget using Iplayer or similar streaming TV channels will use up quite a bit of data.... 1 hour of BBC iplayer could consume about 450mb-600mb and so watching a couple of hours every week could use up a fair chunk if you're on a 10Gb download limit.

Also Spotify used for long periods is another contender.

Plusnet user can log into to their account and see if it was web, streaming video or other reasons for the data usage.

and as others have said, if you have a wireless router then ensure it has security enabled!


d'oh just noticed esuhl has said all this!

mamazaac

Goldielocks wrote: »

Do you know what level of security you have on your router?
WEP is quite basic and easy to hack these days. WPA2 is more secure, it can still be hacked but someone would have to make quite a concerted and timely effort to do so, which is unlikely.

esuhl wrote: »

Also, your wireless interface should be encrypted and password protected. WEP encryption is crackable within minutes. WPA or WPA2 (which is better) is safe enough if you choose a long password.

Ok, after much faffing trying to find it, have managed to establish that it is WPA-PSK so that seems to be ok. As for changing the password or making sure it's long enough, can't seem to find how to do that - there is a row of stars against 'password' so know one is there, but not sure where to go to change it. Usually leave techie stuff like this to my son (age 12 would you believe and seems to understand it all)! He is away for the weekend, so will ask him to check that and change it when he's back.

esuhl wrote: »

There are two possibilities:
1) an external person is using your Internet connection
2) software on one of your PCs is using a lot of bandwidth

Wasn't aware that software used bandwidth - does it do this when you are using the software but don't have any internet pages open? This could be the answer. Is there a way to find out if this is happening and what software is causing it?

esuhl wrote: »

You might also want to run antivirus/malware scans just to make sure that there's no "dodgy" software using your bandwidth (probably unlikely that malware would use a lot, but you never know).

Ok, doing this right now.

esuhl wrote: »

Have you been streaming/downloading a lot of video content? I seem to remember that an hour's iPlayer content is about 600MB... Or is anyone in the house downloading a large number of (ahem) Linux distributions, perhaps using BitTorrent...?

A couple of youtube things, that's all, and not at all the times of the large downloads. Haven't used iplayer in ages or any kind of video content, don't use Linux, don't know what BitTorrent is I'm afraid but probably not.

esuhl wrote: »

Some applications (such as BitTorrent and Spotify, I think) will upload data if you leave them running in the background.

Although the upload is proportionately higher, it is the download which is massively high. Don't think have any applications running in background other than kaspersky, which we have had for a while now so am pretty sure that isn't causing it. Have just googled spotify and can confirm we don't use that.

Usage since last Sunday is normal, so maybe some kind of glitch with Madasafish - from post #7 it looks as though this sort of thing happens. Or maybe some software that hasn't been used in the last week. Probably will never know. Will keep an eye on it and post back in the hope of helping Pont if I find out what it is.

Thanks to everyone for their helpful replies.:)