S'pore: Second person charged with Wi-Fi tapping

SINGAPORE--A second person in the island-state has been prosecuted for illegally tapping into unsecured personal Wi-Fi networks.

According to local media reports, Lin Zhenghuang, 21, is accused of using the wireless connection to post a bomb threat message in July 2005 on Hardwarezone.com, a Singapore technology enthusiast Web site. Lin was charged in court yesterday.

A local English daily The Straits Times said the message was posted in the wake of the London subway and bus bombings. Some alarmed visitors of the Web site had reportedly alerted local police.

The police was able to identify the owner of the compromised Wi-Fi network and seized her computer. However, it later ascertained that she was not the author of the bomb hoax, the newspaper reported.

Charged under Singapore's Telecommunications Act, Lin could face up to seven years' jail and fines of up to S$50,000 (US$32,575).

In November 2006, 17-year-old Singaporean teen Garyl Tan Jia Luo became the country's first person to be charged with accessing an unsecured Wi-Fi network, at his residential estate. He was caught red-handed by a resident, who reported the incident to the police.

Tan has pleaded guilty to the charges and will be sentenced in two weeks, according to The Straits Times. Charged under the Computer Misuse Act, the offence warrants a jail term of up to three years and a maximum fine of S$10,000 (US$6,515).

Not the first, worldwide
More than two years ago, a 21-year-old man was sentenced to nine years imprisonment in the U.S. state of North Carolina for using an unsecured Wi-Fi network to try and steal credit card numbers from a chain of home improvement stores.

According to a study by researchers at Indiana University, a significant percentage of Wi-Fi networks are insecure. In the study involving nearly 2,500 access points in Indianapolis, 46 percent were not running any form of encryption.