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Just to be honest, I know very little about wireless networks and wifi. My problem is that recently I've noticed that when I'm at home, sometimes another unknown network called "Black Parasite" shows up on my networks list. And when it does, my home network either gets wiped off the list, or it starts having connection issues (can't connect to internet, etc). I've tried restarting the router, but the connection problems persist as long as Black Parasite is present. I just want to know if I'm being hacked, or what could be happening.

P.S. I was going outside once when I spotted the network...the signal seems strongest in front of a certain house on my street--could that be a hacker?

UPDATE: may be unrelated, but really shady SSIDs have been popping up, which I found amusing. this happen to anyone?

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  • Change the channel your wifi network is on - there is a signal conflict - unlikely to be a 'hack'
    – schroeder ♦
    Commented Jun 20, 2017 at 6:28

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This is not a security issue, but a WIFI spectrum conflict issue. This is quite common if you use 2.4Ghz 802.11b/g/n. With many people that subscribe to similar ISP in an adjacent area(e.g. apartment), this makes the situation worst, e.g. default ISP WIFI router always set to specific WIFI channel.

You can mitigate this issue by:

  1. Experiment with another channel
  2. Install WiFi analyzer, and choose a channel that is less like conflict with other
  3. Solution 1 will not help if there is too many WIFI routers. Get a 5Ghz 802.11n/a/ac, together with correspondence USB WIFI dongle. Use Wifi analyzer if you want to avoid another neighbour that use 5Ghz WIFI. Because 5Ghz are not as penetrating as 2.4Ghz, so you don't need to worry much about 5Ghz spectrum conflict with your neighbour.(unless you live in HK/Japan with extremely small apartment)
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I think that this network is being used alongside a WiFi jammer. This is pretty effective when you're trying to get people to connect to your 'free' network in a public place, among a list of others. It basically sends out deauth packets on all channels other than the one that it functions on. I can't see why someone would want to jam your network, and I'd need more information to be able to say for sure.

Hardware level jammers are very expensive and probably regulated depending on where you live. However, just spamming deauth packets (or software jamming) works almost just as effectively.

There's no real way to defend against someone sending you deauth packets. You may want to read this answer for more information.

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  • I don't think this is likely given the SSID of the offending AP. It makes more sense that there is a channel conflict
    – schroeder ♦
    Commented Jun 20, 2017 at 11:04
  • @schroeder channel conflict and a complete loss of service? That generally leads to more consistent problems (over a period of time) as opposed to OP where everything stops the minute that network pops up. It's possible I suppose, but I'm just guessing without more data
    – thel3l
    Commented Jun 20, 2017 at 13:46

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