Slashdot Mirror
Warflying 2013 Access Points in Los Angeles
Kallahar writes "We went warflying over Los Angeles and Orange counties yesterday. Flying in a small plane at 1400 feet we detected 2013 802.11b APs in 75 minutes, 71% had no WEP encryption. A map and some pretty pictures are up at my writeup."
What I find pretty amazing is the 500+ people with the default SSID. It's like my apartment complex...if I'm not careful, I can get on one of three different networks and not know it!
[sig] 10 + 10 = 100 [/sig]
Wireless, schmireless -- I love the aerial photos!
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
"Hackerish SSID (h3lpm3) 15 (0.7%)"
/. readers' SSIDs are in that netstumbler log, and I wonder how many are afraid to reply and say so since their GPS coords are associatated to their SSID.
Hey thats my SSID!
All kidding aside, I wonder how many
...is nothing; it's really kinda cool that there are that many.
1430 of them being unsecured, that bothers the heck out of me.
-JDF
Now THAT is an efficient way to map out access points! Very cool.
2013? Must be slashdot got tired of posting really old shit! The mysterious future seems pretty mundane, however.
I'll just get a hot air balloon and get to the right spot and kiss those Internet access fees goodbye!
The Blaster Master Fighting for Truth, Justice, and Evil Pie since 1979
heheh.. a page with some thumbnails linked to 175k-300K pictures. His site is so dead.
on those 2000 APs, wow there are lots of images there... /. in 5 4 3 2 1
Woah, nice to have a map of all the access points, for those times when I'm without internet connection ... or don't want to use my own :D Thank god for wireless!
I'm not drunk, I'm just in touch with pi.
... for people who want to do some file-sharing!
Wow. This guy's pretty brave to post a site with ~150k images on slashdot. All I have to say is "good luck".
In East LA, a pilot is "warflying" when averting the numerous bullets flying into the air, shot by drunk cholos on July 4th. Talk about bombs bursting in air.
And I can hear it already - hey ese, you forgot to encrypt your airport station, homes!
On December 10, 2003 we went out Warflying over Los Angeles and Orange counties. Not5150 was the pilot of the 4-seater beechcraft and Kallahar was the laptop/gps/antenna operator. In a 75 minute flight from Pomona to Los Angeles to Santa Monica to Long Beach to Orange and back to Pomona, 2013 access points were found.
The antenna was a mere Orinoco Omnidirectional Range Extender which was hand held. Unfortunately, the GPS didn't work for the first 20 minutes, and the wireless card crashed (had to reboot) while we were over long beach (took 7 minutes).
Equipment
Laptop Compaq Presario 2190US (2.4Ghz Celeron)
802.11b card Orinoco Silver
Antenna Orinoco 2-3dBi Omni
GPS Magellan Meridian
Software NetStumbler on Win2k
Flight Time: 1 hour 15 minutes @ 1400ft
(699x446 - 134k)
Statistics
Total APs 2013
No Encryption 1441 (71.6%)
WEP Encryption 572 (28.4%)
Default SSID 513 (24.5%)
Hackerish SSID
(h3lpm3) 15 (0.7%)
Informational SSID
(southcoastcircuits) 23 (1.1%)
Someone's Name 110 (5.5%)
NetStumbler Files
WarFlying (1.0MB)
The drive home (168k)
(for reference purposes)
The More Knowledge you have the Luckier you Get- J.R. Ewing
Yeah, it's all fun and games until someone gets caught flying upside down, no pants on, playing with the stick, lookin' at kiddie porn...
Please help metamoderate.
Namaste
Another shocking thing is that many has no password or the default admin password.
(obvious)Orange County and LA County is not Santa Clara County I guess (/obvious)
teh rad!
Microsoft running on IIS 6 again
On December 10, 2003 we went out Warflying over Los Angeles and Orange counties. Not5150 was the pilot of the 4-seater beechcraft and Kallahar was the laptop/gps/antenna operator. In a 75 minute flight from Pomona to Los Angeles to Santa Monica to Long Beach to Orange and back to Pomona, 2013 access points were found.
The antenna was a mere Orinoco Omnidirectional Range Extender which was hand held. Unfortunately, the GPS didn't work for the first 20 minutes, and the wireless card crashed (had to reboot) while we were over long beach (took 7 minutes).
Equipment
Laptop Compaq Presario 2190US (2.4Ghz Celeron)
802.11b card Orinoco Silver
Antenna Orinoco 2-3dBi Omni
GPS Magellan Meridian
Software NetStumbler on Win2k
Flight Time: 1 hour 15 minutes @ 1400ft
(699x446 - 134k)
Statistics
Total APs 2013
No Encryption 1441 (71.6%)
WEP Encryption 572 (28.4%)
Default SSID 513 (24.5%)
Hackerish SSID
(h3lpm3) 15 (0.7%)
Informational SSID
(southcoastcircuits) 23 (1.1%)
Someone's Name 110 (5.5%)
NetStumbler Files
WarFlying (1.0MB)
The drive home (168k)
(for reference purposes)
Pictures (Click for fullsize)
1298x1027 - 263k
1032x1200 - 206k
1600x883 - 194k
1457x1151 - 280k
1600x993 - 205k
1433x998 - 186k
1541x949 - 201k
1600x1200 - 317k
1600x1049 - 175k
1600x1200 - 234k
1600x796 - 196k
1400x986 - 203k
1600x1062 - 281k
1600x1200 - 173k
1600x1200 - 136k
1600x1039 - 105k
1600x991 - 211k
1600x932 - 155k
1374x893 - 169k
Site by Kallahar - kallahar@quickwired.com
Kallahar is much smarter than that moron. You don't get cops stopping you because you're going the wrong way on a one way airplane, eh?
-1, Defamatory
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Did anyone else in the LA area start drooling. I'm sure if I put an antenna out on my terrace, i'm sorry 3'x5' deck I can probable get some free bandwidth. I just wish he included a signal map that way I know which way to point the damn thing.
I had a similar, but lower tech, experience just yesterday. On a bus ride through Seattle I flipped open a standard laptop with a Cisco wifi card, and found dozens of access points. Most of them where open. I wonder how long it will be until wireless companies start offering security out of the box? How hard would it be to have a wireless access point that shipped with a random password and instructions on how to use it? It's pretty obvious that the average person doesn't realize what the risks are. I know because as a desktop support tech I get asked about this all the time. As soon as I start talking about things like WEP and MAC addresses, I see eyes glazing over.
a good site that maps the rest of the US? I had found one, but can no longer locate it. Florida is of particular interest ...
http://slushdot.org/mirror/warfly/warflying.php
Coming slowly but surely!
Mirror
Does anyone have experience getting a signal through brick houses? I've got both an SMC and Linksys .11g routers - neither do well beyond 30 feet when I'm outside.
I bought the Linksys last night as I plan to use it to expand the range. Ideas?
So, how long will it be before warflying is illegal or requires a permit. Here's a funny/sad/true story about a guy who recently got into a lot of trouble for hunting from an airplane.
WEP is not secure, therefore, the fact that WEP is turned off doesn't make it insecure. The best thing to do with 802.11 is to turn off WEP and use secure application protocols, like Kerberos, OpenSSH, OpenAFS, SSL Imap, etc, etc... WEP only adds useless overhead.
And as far as the SSID goes, if you can snoop for the SSID what does it matter what the value is? Default or otherwise.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
Thats all cool, checking for open networks in your little plane.
But WHY did you have to set up all those servers to syn SCO?
They are an honest company looking to make a profit from suing their potential customers, which doesnt follow the DOT COM era at all, so it should be profitable.
On a side note, you also violated homeland security.
[I can picture a world without war, without hate. I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it]
Whenever cool movie series get to the third movie they suck dicks like they're trying to become Emperor of Dicksuck-ylvania. George Lucas had Star Wars, and then Empire Kicks Ass, and then all of a sudden it's Planet of Furry Faggoty Fuckheads. Then he had to make two more to feed the Suck Demon that was holding his children hostage, and those movies went beyond gay to where they're paying old people to take a dump on them.
Even this summer, with MATRIX: SUDDENLY GAY and TERMINATOR: I LOVE COCK, the Rule of the Suck-y Third Movie got re-proven. If the third X-Men movie had come out this summer it probably would have been some crippled crock of crap where Wheelchair Charlie traps Fuck Yeah Wolverine in an illusion mind-trap where Wolverine thinks he's a time traveler from a hundred years ago romancing Meg Ryan in right-now New York. Of course, the X-Men movie would try to redeem itself in the third act by having Wolverine realize it's a mind-illusion and cut Meg's head off and play dodgeball with it, but it would be too late and here comes my extra large Sprite at the screen.
But guess what? One movie series turned that rule on its head. One 3-movie series said, "Wait a minute, we're going to make the 3rd movie SO tits it will make the FIRST two movies look gay."
I just saw HOBBIT-MAN: THE KING RETURNS and that's the movie I was talking about in the last paragraph. This movie will make you forget that if you stick a knife in your belly you'll bleed to death so do not bring a knife to this movie.
It's also, thank fucking God, LOUD. Even if you bring an iPod so you can listen to VH during the Elf parts you'll take it off because I swear to fucking Roth you do NOT know where the next big bang is going to come from, or when something big is going to crunch someone's skull while you picture that person getting their skull crushed is really your neighbor upstairs that plays Dido all day or that dude at the Starbucks who's always reading and looking all smart.
Oh yeah, the movie is also 3 hours and 20 minutes, and I think it's almost four hours if you sit through all the credits (it was all pencil sketches of the characters, which I think means they ran out of money). So if you bring some chick who's all like, "I have a spinning class tomorrow" or "I'm thirsty" tell her to go home and watch Gay Dudes and the Straight Guy because this movie takes fucking commitment. I saw the one dude in front of me who was with this girl, and the President of Warner Brothers came out and said, "This movie is three hours and twenty minutes," and before I could say, "So what, gaylord" the chick says to the dude she's with that she has to GO. And he LET her go because this movie kicks so much ass you can SENSE it even before it starts. And this chick was a stone fox, and he probably could have made out with her, but he was like, "I'm going make out with this movie," that's how good it is. See ya, hottie.
This movie starts with the origin of Golem - that creepy guy who looks like Iggy Pop and wears Tarzan pants and wants the invisible-ring. He's still on a quest with the two hobbits - Rudy from the film RUDY and Fredo - to throw the ring into a volcano (this is like a serious version of JOE VERSUS THE VOLCANO). The ring is also evil but you keep thinking, while you watch it, that someone should put it on and check out some boobs. I have a feeling those scenes will be in the DVDs.
At the same time, the two other midget-men and the giant hippies have seriously fucked up that one evil guy's tower (he was Count Duke in Star Wars: Every Cock in the Universe Up My Ass Part II), and they hook back up with Magneto, and also that chick with the bow and arrows and finally the Giant Midget with the Axe. Oh, and also that I Don't Want to be the King/I Am Destined to Be the King Dude is with them, and he has this whole other story where he pretty much decides to be the King because, I mean, pussy for miles. This is where I started getting really confused, though, because they start talking about kingdoms an
NO?
I can see my house('s network) from here!
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
I'm not an aviator, so I dunno how scary this really is, but doesn't 1400 feet seem kinda low? I mean, wardriving is fun (I'll readily admit that), but some of those pictures look awfully close to those buildings. :O
*Shrug.* Someone with actual light aircraft experience, please correct me..
This statement is false.
According to his map he flew right over one of our offices (Inglewood). It does seem enticing to stick an antenna out on the terrace and see what comes up. Especially since VPN traffic seems to be eating up mos of our T-1 these days.
on a side note I recently enquired at a major computer store. one which right now is advertising free set up. And talkign to the tech he assured me that all I had to do to set up a wireless network was plug it in. Now with things like nimda, Cade Red and such with the advent of everyoen goign wireless at home and not either encryting there connections or passwording it off. hackers/script kiddies will have a field day with this. I jus tpull up to some pure schmucks house log in launch and attack then drive off and the feds would never find me.
So did you create the list of which access points have no WEP?? Information, dammit!! We need more information!!
If you were to start a download and use DA or some such program, how much aggregate bandwidth could you use from the airplane? several gigs per second, I imagine!
stuff |
I am wondering if having an AP without wep and using a default SSID would be of benefit should the RIAA come a'knockin... living in a densely populated area or a large apartment building, could they prove it was you that downloaded 20,000 mp3s? And do I become responsible even if it really wasn't me? I'm sure there are precedents in other areas, but it seems buying an AP at your local walmart and just plugging it in will create quite a liability or defense, depending. Anyone know?
-Lod
You bastards! My AP is on that map!
I am a viral sig. Please help me spread.
Just because a system does not use WEP does not mean it is insecure.
I've been playing with a WAP - my intention is to firewall it to the point that the only things you can do are DNS, DHCP, VPN, and accessing a password-protected HTTP proxy with bandwidth throttling.
The only thing WEP would do in such a case is prevent somebody from sniffing the proxy's password from the air, and if I cared I would just move the proxy over to HTTPS.
Just as WEP != secure, !WEP != !secure.
So all the "OMFG! 73% of all the APs we sniffed weren't using WEP, therefore 73% of all APs aren't secured" is somewhat flawed reasoning.
Granted, it is likely pretty close to the truth. But it is not guaranteed to be the truth.
www.eFax.com are spammers
How many do you think allow only certain MAC addresses to connect?
-- taking over the world, we are.
funny I got through in about 3 seconds
There has to be some way of ensuring that people sort out the security on their boxes. How about not allowing the box to connect unless they change the default settings?
In several offices we used to set the first password for the user accounts as their user login, and then not allow the same password to be used again. We knew the temptation was too great for people to use their login as the network password (and too easy for someone to crack).
Nothing says "I love you" like the gift of 1,430 unsecured networks.
hg
The ______ Agenda
Didn't think of that, and Safari ignored the Content-Type like another evil browser. Blah!
All your Windoze mackines belongg to us !
I wonder how many access points you would find
by flying over the Pentagon
Democratically yours,
Kilgore Trout
No, really! I can see my house! It's in one of the Santa Monica pictures. My AP was probably one of the detected ones, no WEP, but I use MAC filtering, so maybe not. I'm not sure if unregistered MACs can see the AP, actually. Hmm... BUT I CAN SEE MY HOUSE!
What's brown and sounds like a bell? Dung! --Eric Idle
Just like a securityu advisory, it would be nice if he could somehow let people know before he posted a map that lest other people steal their bandwidth...but I guess there really is no other way to let people know. Hell, most of those people probably don't read slashdot, so they won't figure out
Open Source Identity Management: FreeIPA.org
Fweep!! Unnecessary use of knowledge and intelligence. Minus 15 Karma points and no First Post.
This is Slashdot buddy. We don't need no stinkin accurate facts around here. So, stop making sense or go somewhere else.
Here's a torrent with the site, take it easy d00dz.
The file is 3.9 Mb.
warfly.tar.gz
My english is sow-sow. Sowhat?
France, Germany, and Russia are upset that they were not invited to help secure the unencrypted access points.
2013 *71% = 1429 people who will potentially sue you if you try and tell them their network is insecure.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
He seems to have flown right over my house.
My network doesn't show up in the list, though.
For the record, it's called "ACCESS DENIED" and it's got WEP enabled...
If you are in the neighborhood, and need access, just gimme a holler. Pants-less one-handed wardrivers need not apply.
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
WEP sucks. It does.
If you want to use 802.1x you need to setup a RADIUS server aswell. That may be holding them back. Ofcourse, WEP is better than nothing I suppose :)
Check out http://www.isaac.cs.berkeley.edu/isaac/wep-faq.htm l
I am a viral sig. Please help me spread.
WEP is fine, but if you live in an apartment building, you have unlimited time for your hacker neighbors to crack the WEP, even 128-bit. Please use MAC address filtering. Here's a
good how-to if you're interested.
And stop broadcasting your SSID! =)
"In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice, they are not."
Sure those weren't just Starbuck's/TMobile hotspots?
Which do not support WEP anyway.
Contrary to popular belief, life is not a bitch. It is far far worse.
What I find interesting is that the guy slashdotted himself...one way to work out your firewall and web server, I suppose.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
A WarSCUBA expedition has found forty-two 802.11b connections! ...none were using WEP, but Kerberos was there.
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
Looking at his map there are a couple odd things that maybe someone can explain to me:
1) It seems that all the access points he found are almost direcly on the interstate.
2) No access points in Compton? fo' shizzle
A combination of AAA, Autonomous Advanced Algorithms and SAM systems, Secure Authority Message, designed to bring down any hostile airborne WLAN sniffer. Available in both US and Russian flavours.
Hate me!
3. Microsoft's insecure products (you knew I was going to say that)
/. had an article about that recently.. about grades
2. People supposedly in charge of security not up to the task -
1. The users themselves who don't know how to make themselves secure.
How do we solve these rampant problems, you say?
Problem: Microsoft
Solution: Use Macinux or Lintosh (Mac/Linux combo)
Problem: Security "experts"
Solution: Threaten their jobs until they shape up
Problem: Ignorant users
Solution: Educate them
It's been just over half an hour and we've allready launched the unintentional DDoS on the poor guy's server.
This space for rent...
On one hand, we have a few geeks with a laptop, a GPS, and an antennae.
On the other we got some redneck shooting at stuff from an airplane with real live bullets.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
11MB/s. or 22MB/s if he had 802.11g working on a lot of them.
That's like saying 'Hey, I got 100 ethernet cables, since their all 100 MB i'm going super fast!'
Without etherchanneling or something aggergating said bandwidth with an equally large number of cards not much is going to happen.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
Everytime I drive to the grocery store ( 1.5 miles away ) I pick up about 30 AP's. I would say 70% of them have default linksys ssid, 2 of them are cisco with default ssid of tsunami, and 2 of them have WEP enabled. You can pretty much just set your browser's start page to 192.168.1.1 and it does the rest for you..
I saw articles about planned rollouts of high speed network connectivity on planes, but I din't think they meant this!
good thing my router has been out for a while. granted, they probably picked up the neighbor's WAPs when i'm down at the pool...
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Fine, corporate "enterprises" (beginning to hate that word) should have secured their wireless networks. But lets face it, most of the APs discovered are probably Linksys routers sitting in some dude's office. Exactly why do all of these need to be secured?
I'm a normal, conscientious Internet user. Most of the day, my Internet usage consists of email and (I admit) wasting time on Slashdot. I'm not looking at porn, and I'm not wasting significant amounts of bandwidth. Honestly, who should care if I happen to use their unprotected wireless network?
Furthermore, I personally wouldn't care if anyone used mine. I would love to feel confident that I could leave my wireless access point unprotected. Several points nag me, however:
- Every now and then, I'm going to want to download some Linux ISOs. (OK, I mean labels' entire catalogs of songs on MP3.) When I want to do that, *I* should have the bandwidth to do it. I pay for it, I get dibs. So far, I don't know of anything available to your average consumer that will let you throttle bandwidth for your "guests" at will (or, ideally, automatically -- my own MAC addresses get top priority).
- The kiddie porn issue is an issue. As is, I guess, MP3 downloading. I don't want to have to firewall out P2P ports (and play the game of "what port are they using this week") just to protect myself from people using my AP who are too dumb to cover their tracks. No, I do not believe "but my port was unprotected, open to the world" is going to hold up in court.
- People are, by and large, bastards. If I leave my AP unprotected, it's not going to be used occasionally by passers-by etc. It's going to be my next-door neighbor, using it to download massive AVIs all night long, all the time thinking "hee hee hee, this dumbass left his wireless AP unprotected." If I were to open my AP, I'd want the first thing to pop up on your browser to be a notice letting you know that, yes, I see you, yes, I'm logging you, and yes, if you were a decent person and you wanted to use this thing all the time, you might drop by, ring my doorbell, and offer to kick me a couple bucks every month.
Furthermore, I'd like to publicly thank the various people around town whose unprotected access points I've used without permission. You never knew I did it, but it probably saved me some hassle.And finally, I'd like to publicly ask owners of coffee shops, delis, diners, bars, and other lounge-around spots: Have you ever considered not charging for that miraculous wireless network you just "installed"? Face it, Internet access is a flat fee for you. You want to bring in customers to buy that cup of half-and-half (I once heard that milk-based froofy coffee drinks have such an exorbitant profit margin that Starbuck's is essentially in the milk business). So why not do it by offering them a place to sit around, relax, and use their laptops? Seems to me it's no skin off your nose. Coffee shops have been providing shelves of books for years -- why not Internet access?
I bring it up because the coffee shop down the street from my house recently switched from offering free wireless access to charging for it -- something like $15/month, fully a third of the cost of a DSL line that will give me full high-speed access around the clock. Lots of other places are starting to do the same here (San Francisco) -- the "trial period" is over, now you have to pay.
I ask you: Where's the sense in that? I had just gotten into the habit of spending my mornings in that coffee shop, eating bagels and coffee while I got some work done, when they pulled the rug out from under me. Now the main thing that keeps me going down there is the fact that a couple of the shop's neighbors have their own wireless APs -- unprotected, of course. So now I'm not going to the shop as often, I'm buying less coffee and bagels, and worse, you went ahead and paid for all that (evidently quite expensive) Internet hardware and now I'm not going to be part of that new profit-center either.
Make it free, man! Wired magazine said as much, months ago.
Breakfast served all day!
How do you read the netstumbler files, without installing netstumbler?
1. He was flying in a plane over LA. -For simplicity's sake when flying under Class B Airspace, many pilots on VFR flights tend to stick to flying over interstates - its easy and keeps you out of trouble.
2. He had a laptop with only one 802.11 card and only one antenna for reception. The necessarily rules out any radio direction finding for accurate plotting of the access points. Instead what you see is what he picked up as he flew and the exact lat / long the plane was at at the time of the signal hit. If he could do some RDF by maybe having antennas in an array attached to the plane at say the wingtips he could with the right software plot out where each possible transmitter was. But he would need to know what altitude the plane was at, what the heading was and the different signal strengths received at each antenna as well as the distance between the antennas in his array. I don't know of any software out there that does this but the information to do this is readily available.
If he had that setup you would see a map with the projected location of each access point arrayed around the path of the aircraft.
Hmmm...
why 2100+ people can be seen from 1400 ft away but i can't get the signal to my laptop 20 ft away on the deck. :) oh well. Time for bigger antennas i guess.
"And the heathens with their ways of trickery and deceit shall not prevail over the will of the righteous"
And after reading this sort of thing, do we wonder at all why there are people in Homeland Security starting to flap their gums about regulating IT at a Federal level?
I had a sucky sig.
My signal can't even make it from downstairs in the living room to upstairs in the bedroom without a repeater, and yet you guys are picking up signal from 1400 feet in the air!
What the hell am I doing wrong?
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
Way back in the day there was a movie called War Games. In it the main character, the stereotypical teenage movie hacker, had a little script that would cause his modem to sequentially dial every number in an exchange (ie 555-0000, 555-0001, 555-0002, etc.) looking for another modem to connect to. The script then logged all the #'s where a modem was found so that the protagonist could hack the computers attached to the modems at his convenience. This process became known as Wardialing. With the advent of WiFi, people saw a parallel between wardialing and driving around town logging all the APs that were available. Thus, wardriving. Eventually, people also started making chalk markings at the location of the found APs to let others know there was a network there, hence warchalking. Finally, man discovered flight, and decided to look for APs that way, thus arriving at Warflying.
Stay alert for a new Connections with James Burke on this topic.
went RIGHT over my house.. according to the map (I live right above the "B" in Buena Park on that map right where the base station markers are) The city covered up by the markers on the map is called La Mirada.. my home.
He didn't see my open base station. So i'm not nuts.. my base station really DOES have bad RF performance.. maybe i should get it checked out.
(yeah (as a matter of fact) - i don't care if people use my base station, as a matter of fact. Mine is open. In fact, if you request an IP, the DHCP server on my Airport EXTREME (tm) base station will GIVE you an IP. You can't steal from me - i'm giving it to you.)
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
It's been mentioned already by many posters that WEP is insecure. Take a look at AirSnort for details, but basically, depending on the traffic of your network, you can be cracked in as little time as under a day.
Talk about a false sense of security.
WEP is completely disabled to reduce needless overhead on my AP. But I do run a certificate based relaying (See http://vpn.ebootis.de/ & http://www.freeswan.ca/ for details. So if you don't have the right certificate, you can't route any packets in or out of my wireless network.
Have fun cracking a 1024-bit RSA key.
Speaking of warflying/driving/walking, it looks like this is an accident waiting to happen.
A city of 50,000 people jumping on the WiFi bandwagon is going to leave a lot of personal information out in the open. Not to mention the free surfing opportunities.
Cerritos. The Web-Jacker's Paradise.
Tourism's gonna soar, I'll tell you what. I noticed that the article doesn't mention how much this will actually cost, either. Hmm.
UAV spamming.
Coming soon, no doubt!
Or you could pay maintenance and operation on a helicopter to hover over your free access point.
When will it become old news that most users leave their equipment set to the factory defaults?
REM Old programmers don't die. They just GOSUB without RETURN.
On one hand we have an agricultural pest control expert doing his job and keeping with the American way of life..
On the other hand, we have an anarchist/terroist who is collecting data and mapping out components of America's communication infrastructure and disseminating said information amongst his fellow terrorists. For what legitimate purpose???
It all depends on which side you stand and what your view point is. So, what do we really have here? I know, let's call John Ashcroft and let him decide.
I can understand a fixed, antenna-extended AP reaching 1400' in altitude, but laptops/desktops set to peer mode? you'd think even the ceilings/roofs of the buildings would filter that signal right out since the strength just wouldn't be there.
Wow! surprising.
Other than that, I do everything you described...
the antenna is actually 5dbi.. its such a shame they used such a weak antenna for the test... and it was inside the cabin.. you'd think they would have realized the planes shell would effect how many APs they found.
Follow my example and just leave it wide open. All you lose is that your neighbours share your internet connection sometimes. So what?
do your neighbors know about it? ;)
Tracy Reed did this last year (I think) -- Check this out. [ultraviolet.org] Definitely makes you wonder how soon it will be before someone comes up with a way of intelligently integrating all these isolated WLANs to form a really nice mesh of urban connectivity.
Check out my web page on War Sailing & War Dinghying,
http://www.catalina42.org/war-sail/
Norm
... and I don't really care. I live off in the suburbs with a relatively large lot, so someone would either have to be trespassing to break in or they'd have to be hovering overhead to use my internet. Plus I log into the router and make sure noone is using it who shouldn't be using it.
This is all about default settings for consumer wireless routers. If the average user buys a router, hooks it up, and his laptop gets a wireless internet connection (maybe not even his!), is he really going to look into WEP and resricted MAC access lists? I don't think so.
:)
Having set up a wireless router a couple of months ago for the first time (for a friend), I can attest to the fact that default settings *need* to be user-friendly. Call me a dummy, but I didn't quite get how WEP is implemented at the time: IIRC, the interface on the router and the wireless card driver were a little different, and it wasn't clear to me what to input where (SSID, channel, passphrase, generated key, options to retrieve key automatically, etc.) It's nothing that I can't figure out, but it wasn't obvious even to semi-computer-literate person like me.
I think 'restrict access by MAC address' should be enabled by default *after* a first configuration-wizard run (obviously it can't be enabled *before* initial configuration by the user, and needs to be disabled every time the router is physically reset). The first-run wizard should tell the user, IN BIG LETTERS, that if they want to use a second PC/Laptop with the router, they need to allow access from the first PC by editing the MAC list. The user should also be *prompted* for an SSID and told to enter it into his laptop wireless driver configuration. As for WEP, it should be as easy to set up as picking a passphrase (to be prompted for when a laptop attempts to make a connection) or telling the consumer to copy a generated key to their wireless driver settings.
On the other hand, pervasive and insecure wireless access is something all civil libertarians should appreciate, so I'm not sure I'd want things tightened up too much
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
Is Warflying 2013 the sequel to Death Race 2000?
One can't just operate WiFi equipment on an airplane and fly around people's homes gathering statistics on their network security systems. I've never seen a crook who wasn't also a fool. I'm not sure if this is a case of a fool who has become a crook, but I won't be too surprised when this son of a bitch is prosecuted.
It's unfortunate they had such problems with their GPS, non-located network info isn't as useful. Still a fun story, much like Schmoo group at DEFCON 0xa.
The WiGLE database currently sports 595,496 GPS located wireless networks worldwide. We have java, windows native, mac osx native, and web-based clients to plot points on maps and interact with the data. We accept the data formats from the major stumbling packages (NetStumbler, Kismet, MacStumbler, MiniStumbler, anything that outputs wi-scan, etc), so upload away!
-- bobzilla
Wireless Geographic Logging Engine
1,400 feet? Your images show that you flew right over LAX. I hope your pilot ascended up to the altitude of the southbound transition corridor... or, by my calculations, he's gonna have his license for about another 2.1 hours. :)
That was a thing of insanely terrible beauty, man. Come on, mods, even your piggy little souls must have been touched by that! MOD THAT GUY UP!!!! Sweet gibbering Jesus, that was fuckin' awsome!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
for actions performed with your connection. I suspect a case on this will be decided in the next five years. As it stands now, I suspect you would probably be help responsible for illegal activity performed with your connection. IANAL of course, but it seems doubtful the courts or a jury would understand the finer points of wireless security.
Personally, I just use MAC filtering. Yeah, you can spoof a MAC address pretty easily on most hardware in windows. But I'm on 802.11b, and WEP definitely slows things down. And it was periodically resetting the connection on my Orinoco card.
Bottom line, consumer wireless gear can't keep out anyone who's determined to get in. I say make a stab at it to disclaim some liability, use decent security on your LAN, and call it a day.
You should take a pringles can with you
Over here if you did that at 1400 feet you'd be in serious trouble. (Rule 5: 1500 feet over congested areas.)
...out of the box...no shit...surprising, eh?
DON'T stop broadcasting your SSID. It does nothing for security and degrades quality.
Here's a very interesting document about why turning OFF your SSID broadcast is bad.
Here's the antenna I bought a few months ago:
Aerialix 12dBi omni
But then he might end up taking out someone on the ground-- not good.
I actually do know two of the networks listed there. They belong to a university and are simply there to allow students to have wirless access anywhere on campus, isolated from any networks with important data on them.
:)
One of them is mainly the library, the other spans Engineering and computer science buildings.
WLAN and Tsunami if you must know
crypto? bah, humbug ...
Installed it for my father-in-law from the free self-install kit. Didn't even know it was a wireless router 'til my laptop detected it. Very impressive for $26/month. (for 12 months)
My writeup is at www.not5150.com It will answer many questions that people have about the flight. What I find upsetting are the assumptions that some people have made about certain regulations.
I live in Santa Monica, and have no trouble finding Internet wherever I go in L.A. I have a Belkin USB wireless adaptor for my IBM Thinkpad and use WinC. All I have to do is put the Belkin up on the dash and slowly drive down most any street. Within a minute there's a usable open 'net. connection. It comes in real handy when you're out shopping/looking for houses. Go onto Mapquest and get driving directions to the next one you want to find. I even bought a power inverter to run the laptop off the car. I leave my DSL open too, though it's run through a separate router so any visitor doesn't have access to my network.
Problem: Microsoft
:)
Solution: Use Macinux or Lintosh (Mac/Linux combo)
The increase in cost would be more than what you pay for a Windows licence, so no one would switch over
Problem: Security "experts"
Solution: Threaten their jobs until they shape up
But when you hire the next guy/girl, he/she is exactly the same. You keep going through this cycle until the company realises that if you offer more money you might just get the cream of the crop, not the scum from the bottom of the pond...
Problem: Ignorant users
Solution: Educate them
Hahahahahaha, you funny man... I suppose you believe 'Childproof' lids are really childproof and Saddam had WMDs capable of reaching the US and was willing to give them to Osama
If I point out that you are incorrect, making me a foe does not make you any more correct.
By a buncha west australians...
-- ted russ http://www.arach.net.au/~ted/mydynes/ http://www.arach.net.au/~ted/myblogs/
when it comes back up i will have a look