Slashdot Mirror

Not only is it legal, but it's been going on for a long while now.

http://wigle.net/images/rigled-images/world.png

Location based Wifi actually doesn't need to connect to an AP, it just looks its MAC address up in a database, such as this one.

Even if you have WPA2/AES, your AP still broadcasts this information.

Wigle has been doing this for years and years. They're also almost completely open and cross platform. Besides, if anybody wants to know where somebody is, there are a lot easier ways than trying to link a an address from the media access control layer to some coordinate on a map.

Thanks for this, I have repeated this comment hundreds of times to various people setting up their networks and yet they still seem to think that setting the essid as "hidden" is providing some small extra security, when in fact it only obscures your network for legitimate users, since anyone sniffing for a networks will see it regardless of whether you have it set to broadcast or not.

Worse, when your clients can't see the cloaked SSID, they send probes for it that include the SSID. If it's an obscure one, you can just go to Wigle and find out where that AP is. A bit of a privacy problem, if you don't want random people to know where you live, especially if you're out of town.

Well, gdbm/ndbm files I don't think count as flat files to most people. That is one option, though. "Flat" as in "stored as a single file in the filesystem" and "flat" as in "easily human readable" are left kind of ambiguous by the OP.

If one is using Perl, there are database drivers for the DBI that work on CSV, fixed-width files, and more. DBD::CSV and DBD::RAM are two, and I think there are more. The DBI supports SQL-style relational databases, though, which the OP already said were overkill.

If the RDBM overkill is marginally acceptable, SQLite is one that works well as a local data store without a bunch of networking overhead and maintenance. There's a DBI driver for that. The files aren't exactly flat text.

Excel files (the non-OOXML ones) can be accessed through the DBI with DBD::Excel or with Spreadsheet::ReadExcel and Spreadsheet::WriteExcel among others.

Tied hashes would seem to make good sense for this kind of data, particularly a hash of hashes or an array of hashes. It'd be a good way to work with the data no matter the storage type. Tie::RDBM allows one to tie a hash to any DBD that DBI supports. That way, the complexity of the SQL is left behind the scenes if it's the queries the OP is worried about.

If field order isn't important, XML::Simple provides an easy interface to XML files. XML::Twig is a little more complex but preserves the order.

There are YAML tools for Perl, and although I'm not a big proponent of YAML, some people are. It's certainly human readable, which is one of its big selling points.

All of these solutions assume the OP is a programmer familiar with or willing to become familiar with Perl, though.

In the OP's case, a spreadsheet program might be just the thing. IT might also be worthwhile to check into solutions like WiGLE, or look into a stumbler that actually keeps track of its findings in the first place.

http://www.wigle.net/gps/gps/Map/onlinemap2/

it's been out there for a long time. Most people into war driving know about it.

I've been uploading wardriving stuff to WiGLE for over a year, using that you can actually even see the access point names and if security is turned on: http://www.wigle.net/.

http://www.wigle.net/

http://wigle.net/gps/gps/GPSDB/onlinemap/?city=Chi cago&s=Show+City

the full chicago map on wigle, interactive.

Why would they need to do this anyway? They practically already have it.

I like how 16th and Park looks better. Battery Park looks nice too.

I like how 16th and Park looks better. Battery Park looks nice too.

I call bullshit. He might have seen 247 nodes, but never 247 networks

Ok I'll give you that. No, not every single AP served its own independent network. Hell there were 5 or 6 from Verizon's free WiFi phone booths. But there still were a massive number of networks available. Have you ever *been* to midtown Manhattan (53rd & 6th Ave)? At least 20 or 30 stories up? It is INSANE.. with the number of offices and hotel rooms visible from mine, I could pay the mortgage with a website fed by my digital binoculars ;)

So, okay, the most **nodes** I've ever detected in a single NetStumbler session was 247. Check out wigle.net and drill down to New York City sometime (when it comes back up). Now look for the actual streets :)

And it was said. God responded unto G4from128k.

Wigle just a little bit

http://wigle.net/ Has just what you need.

Some good ones:
Dog
Sesame
851-JERK
greekfreak
My penis

Already done on the Netstumbler forums. Personally, I like "You have been hacked fool!". Worst I've personally seen was an address (nnn Afton Valley Ct). Best was "LandOfChocolate". Check them out at Wigle.

Here's a picture I took of one of the access points a few months ago. They are in NEMA weatherproof enclosures, with a support bar attached to an omnidirectional whip antenna (quite ugly - unfortunately I couldn't fit it all in the same picture). In addition, there's a flat directional antenna that obviously connects to another access point. I have also discovered the majority of the access points since they started to appear last fall, and have posted them to WiGLE .

This will be interesting because I think we will see dual band recievers. Often for one reason or another (interference most likely) GPS will give you incorrect position or non at all. However if you have a reciever that can switch over to galileo then this could greatly help all who use GPS. Just think of all the current applications currently using GPS. Shipping, personal aircraft, recreation, wardrivers! Suddenly WiGle will become a lot more accurate.

And don't forget that the World Wide War Drive 4 is currently running, from June 12th to 19th. WiGLE is doing file parsing and real-time stats and maps. WiGLE is the largest worldwide database of gps located wireless access points (currently at 1,214,408).

Take a look at WiGLE (Wireless Geographic Logging Engine)

I'm using it just for the maps, but it has GPS and wifi capabilities (People use it for wardriving). I'm pretty suprised at how accurate the maps are, even for the middle of nowhere Nebraska.

A friend and I have the same 1 watt amp, nearly the same antennas, he runs NetStumbler and I run Kismet. I routinely get 30-50% more networks in tandem social-stumbling (which is a lot of fun, btw, and it helps to have a navigator for doing targeted drives).

We haven't done one since NetStumbler 0.4 came out, however, which is more active in its searching. Initial reports indicate that it does do quite a bit better now than it used to.

It's unfortunate they had such problems with their GPS, non-located network info isn't as useful. Still a fun story, much like Schmoo group at DEFCON 0xa.

The WiGLE database currently sports 595,496 GPS located wireless networks worldwide. We have java, windows native, mac osx native, and web-based clients to plot points on maps and interact with the data. We accept the data formats from the major stumbling packages (NetStumbler, Kismet, MacStumbler, MiniStumbler, anything that outputs wi-scan, etc), so upload away!

BobTheLawyer writes:
> This is getting silly - consumers aren't even close to adopting 802.11a and b in serious numbers.

If you zoom in far enough ssid and bssid will be displayed: Wigle map of the US and 802.11 access points.

I want to see this on WiGLE.