Hacker or what?

[Andras5soul]

I'm not new to mac by any means, but I've never been great with network connections, servers, and general internet stuff. Anyway, I have a home Wifi that has three computers working on it. It is passworded with like a 14 character password.
SO, on my itunes, "mAyaa's limewire tunes" pops up in the "shared" catagory. If I go into my finder and to network, the computer pops up, but I cannot open it or anything because I don't have permission. Is this person looking into my computer or just using my internet somehow? How do I get rid of this because it is really bothering me and I'm getting worried about it.
Thanks in Advance!

 

[mkrishnan]

That iTunes account is definitely not on any of your three computers? That's a bit odd. It's being found using the Bonjour / zeroconf network service. But I thought it should only be finding things on your intranet / local network. Which should only be computers underneath your router. I.E. the three PCs in your house

 

[Andras5soul]

its definitely no1 that I KNOW OF on my network. Could he/she have hacked into the network? and through that, could he/she look through my macbook pro? Is it anything to worry about?

 

[zephead]

Don't worry, seeing their shared iTunes music and Finder shares merely means that their computer is visible. It doesn't mean they're looking into your computer or using your internet or anything like that. And since Bonjour is a computer-to-computer connection, it doesn't rely on the local network to connect.

As for getting rid of "mAyaa's limewire tunes", open the iTunes preferences, click sharing on the top of the preferences window, and uncheck "Look for shared libraries".

 

[mkrishnan]

Is the network secured with WEP or WPA? If it's secured with WEP, essentially anyone with an IQ over 90 and more than 60 seconds of free time could crack it, irrespective of your password length. If you're worried about it, change to WPA. If it's secured with WPA and someone managed to hack into it, yes, I personally would be concerned, because either you have someone with very advanced tech skills taking an interest in you, or else someone actually physically gained access to your password somehow.

You can also turn on MAC filtering from your router so that you can control hardware addresses that get on the network.

Depending on your router brand, you may also be able to run a monitor program to see the MAC addresses of all connected devices. Apple has a program like this for their routers.

I guess the one other possibility technically that would be less alarming is that there could be someone who lives relatively nearby, who is on your service provider, and is using their modem in bridge mode, so that their computer is actually exposed to the public internet. I think in that configuration, their bonjour broadcast would cover the subnet that all the other local modems are on, and so they might actually be part of your local network, and you might see them. That's not too typical though -- I've never seen it.

And since Bonjour is a computer-to-computer connection, it doesn't rely on the local network to connect.

I may have glossed over this part. I thought the WiFi card could only be in one of either the adhoc mode or network mode at any given time, meaning that it could not connect to adhoc shares if it was already on a wifi network? (So that this situation would not be possible when one is connected to a wifi local network)? I'm not sure though, because I'm honestly not that experienced in Bonjour....