Wartrapping?

netphilter writes "This article on ZDNet writes: "A "honeypot" trap consisting of a Wi-Fi-equipped laptop is the latest weapon against drive-by hackers." Although I'm sure that I've heard of this somewhere before, it appears that the latest twist is that this company is looking to sell them to corporations. Hmm...I wonder what the warchalking symbol for a honeypot really would look like?"

Comments

war & wi-fi

[Erpo]

Historically, "wardialing" was phr33k-slang for the rapid dialling of phone numbers. Exactly what does this have to do with 802.11? Driving around and listening to packets is not the equivalent of "wardialling", nor is it in any way similar.

Actually, wardialing referred to having your computer rapidly dial phone numbers and look for modems that would allow anyone to connect. The idea was that Joe Scriptkiddie would start a wardialing program when he got up in the morning and it would dial a randomized list (because the phone company is looking for lots of numbers being dialed sequentially) of phone numbers all day. In the afternoon when he got home from Junior High, he would check to see if the program had found any "interesting" information (modems on numbers that he didn't know about before) and if so he would add them to his "to-investigate" list.

If we define warX to mean aimlessly using method X to find hosts that will talk to anyone, that fits with the definition of wardialing - aimlessly dialing numbers in the hope of finding a modem. Even though driving isn't the most important component of wardriving (one could walk, I suppose), the term wardriving seems to fit. It means aimlessly driving around with a laptop scanning for hosts that will talk to anyone.

Can we dispense with the prefixing of "War" to anything 802.11 related, PLEASE?! This is just stupid now.

As far as I know, wardriving is the only war* term related to 802.11 technologies.

Wardriving is not illegal

[alexjohns]

Driving around and finding unsecured wireless access points is not illegal. There's no reason to make it illegal. If you don't want people accessing your network, secure it. I have yet to see an article about anyone driving around, finding a secured wireless network and then trying to break in. What's the point? OK, fine, if you're stealing something or trying to find insider information, yeah, that's illegal.

For those of us looking for wireless acess, we just want to check email and check a few web pages. There's no way of telling whether a unsecured wireless network was deliberately unsecured to allow people to access the Internet, (like many people and some businesses - notably, Starbucks - do) or whether it was left unguarded due to ignorance, laziness, or boneheadedness.

If you find people accessing your network and you don't want to share, lock it down. What's the point of a honeypot? To find all those roving bloggers on park benches, obsessively updating their fans on the minutiae of their lives? What are you gonna do when you find them? Slap them on the wrist?

Doesn't everyone realize that this is the future? Unfettered access to information, whether you're in line at the DMV, at the park with the kids, Saturday morning soccer, whatever. What other technology is going to bridge that last mile? Nobody's putting fiber down in my neighborhood. Wireless seems like the best option for fast, ubiquitous acesss to me.

Re:Huh?

[gorilla]

GPS doesn't work indoors. GPS doesn't work when there is an object between the receiver and the satellites. GPS doesn't have the accuracy to give a precise line at the edge a of a building.

Stop thinking of GPS as a magic solution to all problems involving knowing where you are. It's good, but it's not that good.