Tuesday, February 5, 2008

is sidejacking illegal under Philippine Law?

My loose definition of sidejacking is when someone uses software to monitor the activity of people using public wifi hotspots.

CNN reported about the dangers of using public hotspots for wifi. One of the dangers they reported was "sidejacking."

Considering that people using public wifi hotspots are informed that these are generally unsecured networks configured for open access, will sidejacking be punishable under our current laws?

Is it unauthorized access? The argument against it being unauthorized access is that persons who use these public networks are informed that information they send out can be viewed by third parties. Technically sidejacking is only watching what others are doing. Unfortunately that can include information like usernames and passwords, making it a gateway to a plethora of punishable hacking activities. Yet, the activity of sidejacking seems to sidestep illegality.

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