A MAN who 'mooched' on a neighbour's unsecured wireless network to make a bomb hoax posting online caused alarm and got his neighbour arrested.
Full-time national serviceman Lin Zhenghuang's hoax posting on Aug 1, 2005 - a day after the London subway and bus bombings - appeared to have come from his neighbour's Internet account.
A week after his posting on a popular local Internet forum, police raided the 22-year-old female student's home and arrested her. Her computer was seized and her family members questioned, although computer forensics eventually cleared her.
Yesterday, Lin, 21, who did not have a lawyer, pleaded guilty to one charge under the Telecommunications Act and another nine under the Computer Misuse Act. He apologised for his actions, which he claimed were made out of 'stupidness' and not due to any 'malicious or evil intent'.
According to court documents, the then-Ngee Ann Polytechnic information technology student had made the bomb hoax posting because he was sleepless and bored.
He faces up to 37 years in jail and up to $150,000 in fines for his actions.
Lin had a broadband network of his own in his Bukit Merah home but he decided to 'mooch' - illegally tap into - the neighbour's unsecured network to make his July 2005 posting titled, Breaking News - Toa Payoh Hit by Bomb Attacks, on HardwareZone's forums.
The message so alarmed one of the forum users that he reported it via the Government's eCitizen website.
Because Lin did not use his own home network, it posed a challenge for the police to establish the true identity of 'krisurf' - the name Lin used to make the offending posting.
It took the police almost a year to finally find and arrest Lin in June last year, and Deputy Public Prosecutor Toh Shin Hao pressed for a deterrent sentence yesterday.
Lin's bomb hoax, said DPP Toh, was no joking matter, he said, and it was also necessary to show that people cannot hide behind someone else's Internet connection to commit antisocial acts.
District Judge Francis Tseng postponed Lin's sentencing to Feb 7, as he wanted DPP Toh to check if different penalties should apply for different bomb hoaxes.
Judge Tseng said there was a difference between a bomb threat calculated to generate panic like 'there is a bomb at Toa Payoh', compared to Lin's posting which could be easily verified and which in fact did not cause any disruption.
Lin is the second person to be charged for unauthorised access and use of wireless networks here. A 17-year-old video games addict was sentenced earlier last month to 18-months probation, and also banned from using the Internet, after he was caught using neighbouring wireless networks illegally to play online games.
