Trouble could come in the form of a neighbourhood kid who piggybacks on your Internet service. While he plays video games online and talks to his friends over VOIP (Internet-based) telephone service, your Internet service may become sluggish.
But an unsecured home wireless system can also be used to commit crime.
According to the US Department of Justice, law enforcement officers will come knocking on your door if someone uses your Internet connection to upload or download child pornography.
And the bad guys don't have to live next door. Powerful Wi-Fi antennas can pull in a home network's signal from as far away as over 4 kms.
According to Finnish cyber security firm F-Secure, for very little money, a hacker can rent a Cloud-enabled computer and guess your network's password in minutes by brute force or using the powerful computer to try many combinations of your password.
The US Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) recently issued an alert about Russia-sponsored hackers carrying out attacks against a large number of home routers in the U.S.
According to Sanjay Katkar, Joint Managing Director and CTO, Quick Heal Technologies, cyber criminals are known to exploit vulnerabilities in home Wi-Fi routers by delivering a payload.
"Once infected with the malware, the router can perform various malicious activities like redirecting the user to fake websites when visiting banking or other e-commerce sites," Katkar told IANS recently.
