Warflying: San Diego

geogeek6_7 writes: "WarFlying over SanDiego reveals hundreds of WAPs, and some very interesting statistics. There is a second write up of the same adventure at the pilot's personal website. All this of course should not be confused with that 1500ft 'WarDriving' effort in Australia."

Comments

Range

[Hayzeus]

At one point we had to ascend to 2500', and yet the APs still kept rolling in. I guess the lack of intervening metal, wood, and concrete made a big difference. I didn't see a drop off in the home use (Linksys, etc) or the commercial (Cisco, etc.) APs.

Not really surprising. With no intervening obstacles (or even a horizon) even a weak signal in the 2 ghz range can have incredible range. It might be amusing to try this kind of thing with a big tethered balloon in an urban area.

Garage door war driving...

[Radi-0-head]

When I was a kid, my friend's mom was a realtor. We learned that when houses were put up for sale, most of the realtors set the dip switches in the garage door openers to a few easy combinations: on,off,on,off,on,etc... or the first half of switches on, the second half off, or vice versa.

Armed with this information, we took a few common brands of garage door opener (Genie, MultiCode, Sears, etc.) and set them to these combinations. We then hopped on our bikes and started riding around the neighborhood clicking the buttons. You wouldn't believe how many garage doors opened.

I sort of drew a parallel between unsecured WAPs and these unsecured garage doors. It was remarkably easy to do. Most people have no clue how to change the dip switches on their garage doors, just like most people have no idea how to change the default SSID, disable SSID broadcasts, and enable encryption.

Because of what I learned about the security (or lack thereof) of the typical garage door opener, I now have a much more secure Linear DX Code receiver controlling my garage, just in case some kids get the same idea I once had.

:)

Re:Garage door war driving...

[topham]

Keyless entry for cars uses an algorithm of somesort based on the remoteid or something. While it is probably possible to hack it (hell, broadcast a signal strong enough and it might unlock anyway) it is far easier to jimmy it. The key in use is generated each time the button is pressed so it isn't the same as the previous one. (You can't eavesdrop it for instance).

According to that map...

[One Louder]

...they flew over my apartment, so I'm probably one of those Apple access points. Oddly enough, because of the construction style of my unit (apparently Spanish Mission Faraday), I can't get a reliable signal from one end of my unit to the other. Glad I can be of service to local pilot community, though.

Inexpensive airborne link is desparately needed

[netringer]

I've been searching for a few years for a way to get legit, reasonably priced, Internet connectivity in cockpit. There are many web sites where pilots can get nearly real time weather data. If we could connect in flight we could see radar images of storms ahead. Commercial weather avoidance devices cost tens of thousands of dollars. It's frustrating that every ground-based wireless connectivity solution just won't work at 3,000-10,000 feet. Besides many, such as cellular systems, are is illegal to use in flight.

Commercial in flight internet links like ground-based AirCell and satellite phones, cost more than $3000 for equipment with conenct rates of $2-5 per minute.

The $3,000 PDA-based AnyWhere WX shows the potential. The promised inflight access to NEXRAD will fill the bill, but most avionics makers are planning systems that are still in tens of thousands of dollars range, when a laptop or PDA will do the job.

Your average weekend pilot isn't going to sign up for a $200 month subcription for something only used for a few hours on nice weekends. (Flamers should douse the fire. Most pilots are mere mortals that made flying a priority, just like those who sink money in hot cars or the hottest gaming machines. Most aren't really rich.

It would be a godsend if 802.11b connectivity could be made to work reliably in flight. Does anybody have any ideas on which wireless technology might fill the need?

Re:Obsessive

[VivianC]

What's next? Wartraining? "Look, we got on these wireless LANs while riding the El in Chicago!

Wartraining? What a great idea! If anyone does this, I'd love to know where I can check e-mail along the METRA Northwest Line. I imagine the metal train cars might make the connection difficult.