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Wi-Fi in the Sky
mindless4210 writes "In an attempt to have the greatest warflying run to date, members from Daily Wireless, Tom's Hardware, SoCalWUG, and Highlands Highspeed teamed up for an amazing two-plane mission around Southern California. They picked up over 3000 access points and 900 clients, established a point to point link between the two planes, and successfully video conferenced in real time over the connection. This is also the first time that the wireless network detection tool Kismet has been taken up in the air, reporting over twice as many APs as NetStumbler. There is some footage of the flight in divx format available here."
How much information can they REALLY gather from flying overhead? I assume that those planes travel as speeds > 85mph. Given the range of most APs, and the altitude of the plane, wouldn't they only be in range for a couple of seconds?
I'm going to go on a roadtrip from the East Bay heading north. My friends will be taking a second car, and we've already decided to set up a link between us for the trip (can you say deathmatch?) - but I need to pick up a pair of GPS units on the cheap. Does anyone have a recommendation for a cheap, gpsd compatible unit?
This is also the first time that the wireless network detection tool Kismet has been taken up in the air, reporting over twice as many APs as NetStumbler.
;-)
This week I realized how much better (like we needed proof) Kismet is over Netstumbler, even the newly released version
Had to fly to our San Francisco office and do some "networking stuff". Stayed in the Hyatt on Embarcadaro, where ironically they were hosting SecureIT 2004...make sure you use ' or ''=' to login to the Hyatts wi-fi service as admin for free.
Anywho, did some wireless sniffing with my "Cantenna" and on average picked up two to three times as many APs/Peers with Kismet than Netstumbler. Same equip on a dual booting laptop.
As a starting point, the WaveSEC homepage describes a way to secure a wireless network entirely using IPsec, without relying on WEP. In addition, for a small home network you can get away with static IP addressing instead of using DHCP, and in this way you can gain all the benefits of WaveSEC security without needing any software patches (since if you look closely all the software patches are DHCP related).
IPsec is supported in Windows 2000 and up, Linux 2.6 (natively) or 2.0 and up (with Free S/WAN patches), and FreeBSD; unfortunately I have no firsthand knowledge of MacOS support. The main drawback of IPsec is that it is a very complicated protocol and takes a lot of effort to set up. Making different systems interoperate with each other is especially challenging -- for this task, I recommend the Free S/WAN interop page which links to an eclectic pile of guides covering most of the possible combinations.
My own home wireless network is a mix of Linux and Windows XP clients all connected via IPsec, and I have much more confidence in its security than I would otherwise have with WEP.
Wait, nevermind! All of the unsecured AP's must just be Mom & Pop coffee shops offering free nodes. Right, must be it.
While sitting at my coffee table, Kismet shows 4 wireless networks available (without an external antenna) and each of these networks has WEP enabled, the message must be getting through to some people!
I know absolutely nothing about Microsoft's WI/FI API, but imagine a virus that spreads throughout the mess (er, mesh) created by the unsecured wireless networks. Hmm... and if the virus is smart enough to determine the WAP's manufacturer, it could even use the default admin password to blow massive holes in the router's firewall as well. While it's not very likely in my geographic location, it could definately be feasible in more densely populated areas.
Oh, and kudos to Kismet for blowing NetStumbler out of the water!
-- In Soviet Russia, radio listens to YOU!
It was a single plane flying over the San Francisco bay area. I used Kismet as well... I think I wasn't the first but I did beat these guys by a long shot.
Two photos here:
kismet photo, San Francisco.
We had an ibook scanning as well, it picked up about 1/10th of the networks. All in all without very good equipment (knoppix, old kismet, nothing special) we got about 190 networks.
It's possible with a good antenna to circle and get online, it's also possible to make cell phone calls if you should feel like it (not that we did that). We were flying at about 2000 feet for most of the time.
It wasn't the last time we did it either. War flying can be fun with a GPS that records the altitude as well as the lat+long.
"Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
I've personally taken my Powerbook 17' w/ integrated 802.11g up in a friend of mine's plane (Grumman American) and was able using kismac for 10.3 (OS X) to pick up some faint wireless base stations, nothing strong enough to actually forge a connection. We had to be flying reasonably slow, and low but it did work. I also had a 802.11 connection going to another laptop, but it was in the co-pilot's seat.
"Overall, a stunt like this does little to advance any sort of "science", and probably wasn't worth the risk to the 4 lives involved"
/sarcasm off.
Hmmm.... Wasn't this said to the Wright Brothers?? Of course, we all know what failures they turned into
Doors pop open all the time. During flight training, flight instructors tell students what to do in the case that a door pops open. It's actually not a big deal, if you have the proper training. The air pressure keeps the door almost closed.
Inexperienced pilots flying formation?? Do you know what kind of formation we were flying? Did you know that both pilots have hundreds of hours? The pilot of the Cherokee has a private airstrip with 5 planes and a helicopter.
The closest we ever got to each other was about 100 feet. Most of the time we were at least 300 feet away.
As far as the wifi messing with the avionics. Yeah there is a chance... but I did a previous warfly in December, 2003. We didn't experience any problems. Also, it doesn't really matter if the wifi messes with avionics, as we flew VFR. We followed visual landmarks, and used a moving map GPS.
Accidents happen... you can't stop that. People get hurt/killed in the name of science every day. Some people take the risks, other people just talk about them.
not5150
. . .probably wasn't worth the risk to the 4 lives involved
Personally I'd say making this assessment is strictly the business of the 4 lives. If someone wants to attempt a free climb of the north face of the Eiger it really makes no nevermind to me.
Risks to others are another story.
Of course, you risk other people's lives every time you take a drive to the mall as well, in tight formation with God knows who doing God knows what. There's no clean ethical cutoff.
Of course, on a typical day cars don't just drop out of the sky onto your head either, although it's been known to happen.
KFG