According to the indictment, Harris helped develop tools that could be used to sniff MAC addresses in order to get on the network free.
'If you use it to steal service, you're breaking the law.'Ĭable modems can also be configured to use a paying customer's MAC (Media Access Control) address to steal service. 'If you buy a modem and you can hack the firmware, it's your piece of hardware,' he said. Pollock said he published the book to give Internet users good information about how to tinker with their modems and get diagnostic information, some of which is blocked by Internet service providers. However, the question of whether uncapping a modem is illegal is 'not clear,' according to Bill Pollock, founder of No Starch Press, which published Harris' 2006 how-to book, Hacking the Cable Modem. Hackers have known for years that certain models of cable modem, such as the Motorola Surfboard 5100, can be hacked to run faster on a network, a process known as uncapping. 'These modems were capable of hacking a cable network and obtaining free Internet service,' the indictment states. Federal Bureau of Investigation agent bought modems and a book by Harris about cable-modem hacking.
The arrest follows a November 2008 undercover sting operation, where a U.S.
