Warchalking Visual Cues To Urban WLANs

elucidus writes "Matt Jones has put out a PDF and EPS outlining symbols to use in Warchalking the WLAN nodes of your community. Here's a pic. Ben Hammersly dubs them Hobo Runes." Brings to mind pictures of scruffy individuals around a fire with picturebooks, taking a pull from some ripple while reading slashdot.

Comments

Here's a simple idea to increase security

[PhysicsGenius]

The IT professionals among us are rightly concerned about software security implementations, especially from a well-known company in Washington State. The even more knowledgeable are concerned about the protocols themselves. This concern is 10 times greater when the network data is whizzing through the air for anyone to intercept. Luckily I've had an idea that may prove fruitful as a first line of defense against tactics such as war hacking and driving.

Despite the catchy slogan, sometimes obscurity can provide a small measure of security. The first step in securing wireless networks should be making the transmissions uninterceptable by hackers. Therefore I would like to invoke the concept of "guided wavefronts". What you do is you provide a contained medium that is impervious to casual break-ins within which the signal can propagate.

The scheme could prove bulky, so I propose that the contained medium should be made of some material that will conduct an electric charge quite well, such as metal. If this is done I suspect the guided wavefront containers could be made as small as 1/8"-1/4" in diameter. Also, there will be a certain amount of secondary leakage because of electromagnetic radiation produced by the contained signal, but making the container out of some kind of shielding matter would solve this issue.

I haven't seen anything like this concept on the market but it seems like a good idea. How come nobody is working on it?

Linked picture

[Migrant Programmer]

What is that supposed to mean?

"Breast viewing permitted from 1-5 pm only"
"Caution, cleavage overhead"

Re:Linked picture

[Em Ellel]

This is why you should READ the article before looking at pictures and posting comments.

It is clearly described as 1-5 AM

-Em

Oh great...

[InnereNacht]

Before you know it some poor geek is going to get beat down in urban Chicago by a gang because they think he's marking their "turf".

Re:And look what they are doing to streetsigns

[Sabalon]

I'm sure the military is flying their Apache's along 10 feet off the ground looking at the back of street signs trying to find someplace to land.

With a 30mm cannon, and a combo of hellfires and 70mm rockets, I think the answer is "wherever it damn pleases".

What's next?

[hprotagonist0]

Wardriving,
Warwalking
Warchalking...

Warhopscotch
Warsitting
Wardrinking (If there's a glass with a coaster on top of it on the bar, there's an open WLAN)
WarSegwaying
Wargeocaching

Re:What's next?

[haa...jesus christ]

So would a malicious slashdotting by a nation state be called wardotting?

damn i'm funny.

Slash dotted

[Target Drone]

Somebody should go down to O'Reilly and draw the warchalk symbol for a slash dotted node on their building.

SSID

[b1t r0t]

Won't the lusers unintentionally running wide-open nodes get suspicious when they see a chalk mark outside that says "LINKSYS )("?

Re:Dude, spell my damn name right! :-)

[Skiboo]

As Matt's server screams in the dark London night, you could spell my name right...HammerslEy

Well, you can't blame them for misspelling it, how many names have a capital E in the middle of them? ;)

What it means...

[alienmole]

...is that you're more likely to be a victim of warchalking, than a beneficiary.

wow.

[evilpaul13]

taking a pull from some ripple while reading slashdot

boy does that bring back memories!

don't even try this

[msouth]

I'm patenting it as you type.