A few months ago I started renting a small cabin. My landlord owns the property and lives in the house. The cabin is about 250 feet away. We split the cable and internet bill. Both are in his name.

My landlord was telling me that the guy that used to rent the cabin before I got there had been in jail for hacking. Apparently before I moved in, that guy hacked into my landlord's account and changed the password. My landlord told the FBI I guess but hasn't heard anything since.

Now that I'm living in the cabin, do you know if this guy would know my IP Address? Would it be the same address as his, or would I have my own because I'm using a different computer? Basically, can he hack my info?

it would depend on the infrastucture/devices/routers/switches/security and whether or not ur line is a static address from the ISP or does it randomly change.

Best bet if using say a router is to hard reset it or even relace it, make sure he hasn't left ports open on it etc
make sure the router admin settings have been changed from factory defaults i.e
username admin
password admin


also block certain ports i.e remote ports


there is heaps im just listing off top of my head

If you're concerned about it talk to the landlord about getting a different ISP, that would make sure you have a new IP address. If he doesn't want to do that see if you can convince him to refresh all of the hardware between your computers and the wall; new cable modem, new router, new switch. If you can't do any of that make sure you have a good firewall between your computers and the network.

How long ago was the guy there? And is the internet cable, dsl, something else?

"Hacking" a device on your own network is trivial. I'd definitely have them change the password on the router, just in case, or if they won't, do it yourself if it's default.

Yea my landlord got a different ISP and changed the router password. The guy was there about 5-6 months ago. I moved here in January.

Sorry it took so long to reply. I forgot about asking lol.

He got a new ISP and router after the guy left?

Probably safe unless he spread some malware on the network, such as to IoT devices, network drives, other people's computers. Would be a lot of work for very little payoff though

Yea after I moved in, my landlord gave me the password to the wifi and it wouldn't work. So when he tried to sign on w/ the master account, the password had been changed. So he called the FBI. Not sure what's happened since then but my landlord didn't take any chances. Got a new ISP and router.

are u sure the guy hacked anyone

what exactly was hacked (curious)

Probably just logged into the router which likely used the default password.

Landlord would be wise to change literally all his passwords but you're probably fine.

I doubt it was the hacker, no motive.

My guess was it was left over hacks that were used against the hacker which landed him in jail.

Probably the FBI which was why they never responded.

If I were in the landlord's shoes, I would probably just factory reset router and/or modem and reconfigure from scratch. A new ISP isn't going to make any difference. A new modem and router would make sense if you want to be absolutely certain there wasn't something changed on them that a factory reset wouldn't clear, but I think that's pretty unlikely.