I think someone is tapping our LAN connection?

Go in your router and block their MAC addresses, or you can set it up to only ALLOW YOUR MAC addresses. Another thing you could do is create a new, stronger password making sure you use WPA2, and don't broadcast your SSID.

However, someone who is talented and knowledgeable enough could keep using Backtrack 5 to crack the key. BUT if you use a WPA2 key with AES, it takes FOREVER for the program to crack the key, and it doesn't always work.

If you'd like any help, feel free to email me.

"so I went in and overrode the factory defaults and set an admin password..."

I assume you are referring to the login page for your router's settings and if so, changing the password here only secures access to your router's settings/config, it doesn't secure your wireless network. Wifi access on your network is still unsecured, meaning anyone within wifi range of your router can connect to your wifi network and mooch off you.

Log in to your router's settings/config and go to the section dealing with wifi (wireless) security, here you can enable wireless network security, select authentication and encryption method such as "WPA-Personal" which is suitable for most home networks, and you can specify a password (choose something that will not be easy to guess but will also be easy enough for you to memorise. save your changes and restart the router. Use the password you created to connect to your network from your wireless computers/devices, you should only need to type the password once, after which the computer/device should remember the network SSID and password and connect automatically thereafter. And your neighbours will now be SOL ;-)

You MUST be using a wireless access point. Hardwire does NOT suffer from leeching since you would SEE the cable! Implement SECURITY. Putting a password on the router only prevents someone from configuring your router. You have NO SECURITY set, so anyone can use it to connect and LEECH off your connection. Go into the configuration pages of the router and simply set a password. Most will have some kind of default password assigned already, but it is not enabled. Simply "enable" the password, and then change the default to something different. WRITE IT DOWN! It IS case-sensitive so spaces, numbers, punctuation and capitals ALL COUNT. Mine has a 32 character hexadecimal number as the default. I simply added my birthdate in hexadecimal to the default number and created another that no one would ever be able to guess even if they knew the default value. AND I could easily recreate it if needed. Once you do THAT, you have to go to each of your devices using your wireless access point and configure each to use the same password. That is all it takes to implement security as stop leeches. THAT is why you WRITE IT DOWN! The cable company has NO control over the wireless access point. NO ONE is tapping your cable on the other side of the cable modem, the ISP side of your router. THAT is probably scrambled already by your router when it connects to your ISP.

Implement security and your problem will be resolved. Read the documentation for your cable modem. It should have detailed instructions on how to implement security. They default it to OFF simply as a convenience for THEM so they don't have to assign individual settings during manufacture. If you have trouble setting up security or the instruction don't work for you, call the cable company for further assistance on HOW to set up security.

By the way, wireless is SLOW compared to wire. I suggest you drop the wireless in favor of wire. Turn the wireless access OFF. The reason why is wireless is a party line. It suffers from "the party line effect". Each wireless device has a transmitter and a receiver. It can "talk" and it can "listen" but either/or, not both at the same time exactly like a telephone party line. ONLY ONE TALKS while everyone else MUST listen and wait until the line is clear. Then when the line is clear, you flip to transmit, and talk. The problem comes in when another is on the line and was waiting as you were. You both try to talk and things get garbled and no one gets through. So you wait, and hearing no reply, you try to talk again. And what if the other guy did the same thing? You collide again, so you try again, and again, and yet again. Until ONE of you gets far enough out of sync so that when you listen to see if the line is clear, you hear the other guy start talking, which now forces you to wait for him to finish. Get the picture? all those collisions is LOST time, so your connect speed gets slower and slower the more people who are waiting to talk. So, wireless is simply a wireless version of a typical telephone party line with ALL of the same problems. Also, your neighbors count even if they are not connected to your access point. They each have a transmitter as you do and you have to wait for them to stop just as they have to wait for YOU to stop, so if you can HEAR another wireless network, they count against YOU as you count against THEM. At least in your misery, you can be comforted in that the misery is equal opportunity, and you are causing them the same problems they are causing YOU...

it is the wifi pasword you need to change to stop people from using your wifi, you can filter wifi access on the router by enabling mac filtering. each pc has a mac address that never changes, you can block this mac address from connecting to your router

hide your network, set up a 40 letter password, (optional) get new modem (this will help with you hiding it) and finally request an ip address change.