Asshattery to an Astronomical Degree

[Clodfobble]

Sometimes in life, you meet a person who is such a ridiculous asshat, they are practically a parody of themselves. And just when you think they can't possibly be any worse, they surpass your wildest expectations.


Several weeks ago, we attended the wedding of one of Mr. Clod's coworkers. At the reception, we ended up at a table with a different coworker, who had brought her boyfriend, who shall be known as Asshat. Dude actually looked exactly like Cary Elwes, but even Mr. Elwes has never played a dick as big as this guy. First he led his girlfriend in this really drawn-out, awkward guessing game, trying to get her to figure out a song he was thinking of. Then he asked another guy at the table to trade plates with him because "his steak looked more done, the way I like it" and then changed his mind after cutting into and examining it, and insisted on trading back again. I can't even remember the other things he did, but suffice to say we walked out laughing and shaking our heads, wondering if his girlfriend was embarrassed by him or too clueless to recognize it.

So. Out of the blue today, Mr. Clod receives this email from Asshat, who keep in mind he only met the one time at the wedding weeks ago:

Hey [Mr. Clodfobble],

Was hoping you could help me out with a particular wireless matter of a somewhat advanced nature.

Fact: my new job prohibits me from internet usage of a non-business nature and I'm getting way behind on correspondence related to leadership roles I play in some civic organizations.

Fact: I bring my own laptop to work and use it often. It is not connected to the company network in any way nor is it monitored by the a-holes.

Fact: there is one fairly strong wireless signal coming from next door.

Questions: assuming the key on this wireless network is WPA-TKIP and set to some mundane six-letter word, is there any kind of script that I can run to work through the permutations until it establishes the key? Are there mechanisms coded into the router firmware that prevent such a decryption? Are you familiar with this process (or a similar one) and can you help me out?

I will gladly buy you lunch at Houston's if you can lend a hand.

Thanks,
[Asshat]

Or, translated: "Dude, network guys are such assholes. Since you're a network guy, could you help me do something completely illegal, and in return I'll take you to a restaurant of my choosing that happens to be very close to my job and nowhere near yours?"

And let's not even go into what his "leadership roles" in "civic organizations" might be.

I was extremely proud of Mr. Clod's response, because he's not exactly known for being polite to people who are idiots.

Hi [Asshat],

Not to be one of those a-holes, but what you are proposing is fairly plainly illegal. The traffic that the other company is sending is encrypted, meaning that there is no defense that says that you didn't know this was not for public use. Regardless of the ease or difficulty of establishing a connection, I would strongly advise against this. Beyond that, while there was a recently published TKIP weakness, the protocol is still quite solid, and dictionary attacks, while possible, take long enough to complete a single attempt that unless you REALLY know that it's a six-letter word, are not realistic. That being said, there are dictionary files out there, and while I'm not specifically aware of many war dialing scripts for wireless, they most likely exist somewhere, but I don't think that it would take a trivial amount of time to break through... you'd likely be looking at months even if you had a pretty good hint as to the size of the key. I think that it's in the best interests of those civics organizations if their leadership is not caught doing illegal things for their sake. Besides, if the company doesn't want you doing non-work things on their network, they probably are just wanting you to not do non-work things at the office. If it's just correspondence, often times employers are pretty happy about employees being involved in the community because it reflects well on them, especially if they get to sponsor a nice event for cheap. If may just be better to talk to the boss about your role with these organizations, though obviously it depends on the company and the organization. If you're just doing email and such, you might be able to use your phone as a tethered modem depending on the phone (and your data plan).

Thanks,
[Mr. Clodfobble]