According to the Huffington Post, the Buffalo, New York, homeowner "didn't need long to figure out the reason for the early morning wake-up call from a swarm of federal agents."
"That new wireless router. He'd gotten fed up trying to set a password. Someone must have used his internet connection, he thought," said the newswire.
The police reportedly told the man that they knew who he was, after he had allegedly downloaded thousands of images late the evening before.
The newswire sums up the sorry tale, noting that US law enforcement officials say the case is a cautionary one. "Their advice: Password-protect your wireless router."
It took police three days to work out what had happened, and they ended up arresting the man's 25-year-old neighbour on child pornography charges.
If you've read this far and are asking what this has to do with you, a security professional, please read on, as it seems that 308 professionals at the Infosecurity Europe 2011 show last week accessed their internet and email using an open WiFi access point like the one used by the 25-year-old New Yorker.
Although the access point was only open for four hours on day one of the show, Cryptocard, the firm that staged the test, says that the experiment illustrates just how easy it is to hack the unsuspecting users of mobile devices – including smartphones and laptops – even among those in the business of selling security solutions.
Commenting on the New York armed raid on an innocent – and possibly naive – WiFi access point owner, Stan Shyshkin of the BrickHouse Security newswire said that, since the owner didn't have his network secured with a password, it was open for everyone to use and download what they wished.
"Including the child pornography images that the agents traced. Turns out it was his neighbour, 25-year-old John Luchetti, that was responsible for the downloading the despicable material", he said in his security blog.
"To keep yourself safe from being blamed for something you didn't do or download, you have to make sure your WiFi network is secured. Make that password tough to crack, and always be careful with whom you share your personal information", he added.