Praise is due to Allah Almighty and peace be upon the Prophet (PBUH), his family, companions and followers;
One of the main and major objectives of Shari’a is to preserve properties; hence, the Islamic law prohibited any unlawful assault on others’ properties, as Allah Almighty says: “Consume not your goods between you in deception, and proffer them to the judges, that you may consume a portion of other people’s goods in sin while you are aware”. [Q:2:188] and “O you who believe, consume not your goods between you wrongly, except it be trading through mutual agreement. And kill not yourselves. Surely Allah is ever Merciful to you”. [Q:4:29].
In that sense, hacking Wi-Fi without prior explicit or implicit permission from its owner is prohibited; indeed, the majority of jurists agreed that amenities are considered as funds, and all the rulings of prohibiting assaulting funds without their owner’s consent are applicable to properties in the same sense. If he/she uses Wi-Fi without its owner’s permission, the user must inform the owner and seek his/her pardon and forgiveness.
Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) said: “He who has done a wrong affecting his brother’s honor or anything else, let him ask his forgiveness today before the time (i.e., the Day of Resurrection) when he will have neither a Dinar nor a Dirham. If he has done some good deeds, a portion equal to his wrong doings will be subtracted from them; but if he has no good deeds, he will be burdened with the evil deeds of the one he had wronged in the same proportion”. [Narrated by: Al-Bukhari]. Hence, either the property’s owner forgives, or the wrongdoer gives away in charity as much as he/she has benefited from that property.
