Worldwide WarDrive Aftermath

wardriver writes "The event took place on August 31st 2002, people from around the world took part in the effort to document and make known wireless access points as a group. Some people go WarDriving everyday, so this was just like an normal day for many who attended any of the world wide events as documented on the results page. Hardware ranged from laptops, to car mounted computer systems, to handhelds all equipped with GPS devices to accurately map the spots. Cars were marked with )(WarDriver stickers and people were sporting their wardriving is not a crime t-shirts. All in all the event went well and with enough pressure and requests to chris it may happen again." And in a related story, Dr_Marvin_Monroe writes "Wardrivers be warned---- A Practical Approach to Identifying and Tracking Unauthorized 802.11 Cards and Access Points includes information on locating rogue access points and intruders."

Comments

Cisco

[Beatbyte]

It should be known that there are cards that can "just listen" without letting themselves be known.

Cisco makes the AIR-LMC350 which would be a good choice for wardrivers.

Or, not being an idiot administrator and leaving everything open helps too ;)

Wardriving Results

[drewzhrodague]

Also, people have been uploading their scans to http://mapserver.zhrodague.net -- a web-based mapping package for the entire planet, and http://www.wigle.net - a java-based mapping client. Check 'em out when you get a chance.

Re:already slashdotted

[Anonymous Coward]

Try (don't Slashdot) here... http://www.dis.org/wl/score.txt

Re:Why "WarDriving"?

[SynKKnyS]

It was named after "War Dialing." http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_dialing

Re:Why "WarDriving"?

[autocracy]

Comes from War Dialing - dialing every phone number in a block in an attempt to find modems. This was typically done in order to find a weak point in an organization. War Driving is a similar art.

Just FYI... Re:NPR story

[don_bailey]

Note that the 400 access points we discovered were just during THAT evening's war-drive.

I war-drive for one reason--to guage the growth of wi-fi in the Northern Virginia area. It's been fascinating. Driving last year I'd pick up 20-40 access point within a few miles of my home. Now, I pick up several hundred on an hour long cruise around my town. That phenomenon keeps me going out on a monthly basis.

We visited Old Town Alexandria for this NPR event. We combined it with a "war-walk" and it's a shame they edited out that portion of the adventure. The inebriated queries regarding our yagis were an amusing portion of the un-edited mini-discs.

If you would like to see the setup that was used, visit:

http://ruff.cs.jmu.edu/~beetle/wardrive/index.html

We used this same setup for a similar war-driving demo for the Baltimore Sun a few months back.

Beetle