{"id":26,"date":"2015-11-14T13:55:45","date_gmt":"2015-11-14T13:55:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vandebilt.co\/?p=26"},"modified":"2025-12-05T12:13:31","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T12:13:31","slug":"26","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/joe.nkode.uk\/index.php\/2015\/26\/","title":{"rendered":"Who the hell is Mark?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A few days ago I was sitting at my computer as I do and saw this in windows explorer\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\"Active<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I was a little confused, I live alone and only have a handful of devices connected to the internet, none of them called mark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I checked my DHCP and found nothing, just me and my phone online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I remembered that I recently connected to the work VPN and maybe windows was remembering some of the devices I was connected to, one of the guys in Infra is called Mark, so it was probably his laptop and windows was just remembering it, at the very least nobody was on my network\u2026 right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So a day goes by. I notice again in windows explorer, my laptop is not online, but my PC and Mark are, not only is Mark still connected to my network, but I know for sure my network has refreshed recently. The plot thickens!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I again checked my router, no other devices connected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A week or so goes by, my network keeps playing up, having dropouts, devices not connecting to one another general laggy behaviour, Mark is still there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One day I\u2019m playing CS:GO and my connection drops out, third time this week. I go to check my router settings. Type in username and password \u201cThis password is incorrect\u201d. Try it again, \u201cThis password is incorrect\u201d I double check the IP to make sure I\u2019m still in the right place. Then it hits me; my router doesn\u2019t ask for a username, just a password.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was seeing this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\"Login<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n


<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But should have been seeing this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\"My<\/a>
My usual login screen<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I checked on my phone, connected to my router first time. Checked the DHCP and noticed something odd. I wasn\u2019t there. My PC just was not connected to my network. So I thought I would check, and lo and behold<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\"My<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

My PC and the rest of my devices were on 2 separate networks. So what\u2019s the difference, well my PC has a wired connection but instead of connecting direct I use powerline adapters, articularly I have these powerline adapters. Powerline adapters use your homes internal wiring to transmit data packets around the place, as to not interfere with regular electricity they broadcast on different frequencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I thought, what if a neighbour has the same adapters I have, or ones using the same frequency. The connection at my end wouldn\u2019t know who it was paired with, it would connect to both or switch between them depending on who it decided to pair with. Now it made sense, the slow internet, the timeouts wasn\u2019t my service being shit. I was connecting to another network altogether!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I decided to conclude my findings, on this new network I decided to have a bash at their router password, most people aren\u2019t me and don\u2019t change their default password, and since it was a Virgin Router I knew what that\u2019d be. Unsurprisingly I gained access straight away, went to their DHCP page and would you believe it<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\"Marks<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Mark was never stealing my internet, I was stealing his! it also meant, more worryingly, that the electricity in my house was not a self contained network, the sockets on my PC are somehow connected to another houses power supply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was so impressed by this problem I thought I would share it, as I\u2019m simply fascinated such a problem could exist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few days ago I was sitting at my computer as I do and saw this in windows explorer\u2026 I was a little confused, I live alone and only have a handful of devices connected to the internet, none of them called mark. I checked my DHCP and found nothing, just me and my phone […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[8,6,5,7],"class_list":["post-26","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","tag-adapter","tag-ethernet","tag-networking","tag-powerline","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joe.nkode.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joe.nkode.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joe.nkode.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joe.nkode.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joe.nkode.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/joe.nkode.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":341,"href":"https:\/\/joe.nkode.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions\/341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joe.nkode.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joe.nkode.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joe.nkode.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}