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Wardriving From 1500ft Up
luciensims writes "Wireless networking blog e3.com.au is running a story about a few of their members flying a private aircraft 1500ft above Perth, Western Australia. They found over 90 access points. Details are here."
Perth has a large wireless LAN community access network. See innaloo.net for more details. They use high powered 802.11b gear to set up long range links, which would likely be visible from low flying aircraft. Also see links on that page to other Perth freenet/WLAN's.
I'm lucky to get 30 metres (100ft) range from my Apple Airport gear..
posted by Jason Jordan on Sunday August 18 2002 @ 05:14AM WST
Projects
[link to pictures]
We did it! It's gotta be a first! We don't need no car to car WLAN's - we go WarDriving at 250km/h in an aircraft... 8-)
Cap'n Richard, Will (Yagi), Peterh & me took "IGI" - a Grumman Tiger 4 seat aircraft up to 1500ft and flew around Perth picking up AP's with Netstumbler running on an Handheld Ipaq/Cantenna and Kismet on a Toshiba Tecra 9000 with built-in Antenna.
We stopped at Rotto first for a quick run to the Bakery, but then it was on. We got 92 AP's with Kismet... and 95 with NetStumbler.
You can check out the photos by clicking the link below. There is also an image generated by Cap'n Richard to demonstrate the track we took around Perth available on the Rogues site.
You can check out the Kismet & NetStumbler logs for yourself:Note: The Kismet dump file is not included for security reasons. After reviewing it, I found IRC conversations, emails and clear netbios traffic for known local Perth users. I will follow up with them to "improve" their security.
Speaking of security... I wonder how ethical it would be to code up a script that maps to printers available on open/insecure WLAN netbios networks and print out "Your Wireless Network is insecure, Please fix it!"?
I know what the law says so I'd never do it... but it would give the sysadmins pause wouldn't it ... 8-)
Reposted on Sunday August 18 2002 @ 05:14AM WST
Trollem mirabilem hanc subnotationis exigiutas non caperet
The e3 webserver is a Gateway (moo) PC! It's a little Celeron 400 with 192mb of RAM and a single IDE Hard Drive.
Anyone want to send a server?
wut?
I am a pilot who flies a small, single engine aircraft and does so very, very frequently, and often for very long distances (coast to coast, etc.).
Cell Phones can and occasionally do interfere with the NAV-COM radios, but most of the time they do not. However, I recall one time when a friend hadn't turned off his phone and I couldn't hear the tower as a result, despite the fact that I was sitting on the ramp only three hundred yards/meters away. As soon as he turned his cell off, reception was fine, so it can and does interefere rather catopstrophically at times, when conditions are right.
I haven't measured VOR-DME deviations due to cell phones, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if they didn't interfere with navigational signals as well, when conditions are right. That could potentially be catastrophic during flight in IMC (instrument) conditions, particularly if there were terrain nearby.
In any event, alll that is rare. Most of the time cell phones will at most add a little static to the transmission or reception, and often they won't interfere noticably at all.
That is only half the picture, however.
The FCC has made it illegal to use cell phones in the air because one phone call can occupy a slot in several cells at the same time, vastly decreasing the call capacity of the system.
Two hundred people on a jumbo jet using cell phones could well equal 20,000 people on the ground. It clobbers the cellular system, and is sufficiently bad that the FCC has made a regulation against using such phones in flight. The FAAs regulation is basically "obey the FCC regulation."
Of course, if it is an emergency, FAA regulations clearly state that any (FAA) rule may be violated if the saftey of the flight requires doing so. The FCC might not be as flexible, but in a true emergency I for one wouldn't worry about it, and use the damn thing anyway if I needed to.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Whoever modded the parent up as 'insightful' is a friggin idiot. Wardriving, warchalking, warflying (?), all have roots in 'wardialing'. Wardialing was simply the practice of dialing a bunch of telephone numbers in an exchange to work out which ones have a modem answering the line. This was done with a bit of software known as a wardialer that would note which numbers answered with a modem so that it could be examined later.
I've heard it said that the term 'wardialer' is related to the film 'Wargames' - in which the lead character wardials his way into a DOD computer system. I don't know if the relationship between the movie title and the term is true, though. BTW, if you've never seen the film, don't bother; it's crap.
That said, the parent post would get a +1 funny from me if it actually were funny. But it ain't insightful.
Knowing which channels and frequencies that ARE and where in use enables you to develop a free wireless network that minimises channel overlap.