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Warflying 2013 Access Points in Los Angeles

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the now-thats-just-crazy dept.

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."

4 of 328 comments (clear)

  1. That's nuts by GabeK · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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!

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    [sig] 10 + 10 = 100 [/sig]
  2. Hey thats my SSID by Delta-9 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "Hackerish SSID (h3lpm3) 15 (0.7%)"

    Hey thats my SSID!

    All kidding aside, I wonder how many /. 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.

  3. 1400 feet? by planckscale · · Score: 5, Interesting
    You would think at that alitude they wouldn't pick up anything, considering my buddie's WAP won't reach his backyard. I wonder if they're mostly business WAPs?

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    Namaste
  4. Warbussing by spooky_nerd · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.