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Irish 'Running Man' WarWalking Competition

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the now-thats-a-strange-game dept.

phaxx writes "Dubbed 'WaveHunt', this is the Irish take on DefCon's RunningMan competition. Contestants will have three attempts, each an hour long, to locate a moving Linksys WRT54g running OpenWRT Linux. They must positively identify the person carrying the hidden acccess point and report this back to base. The first prize is two hundred euro, and it takes place this coming Saturday, March 5th. The intended venues are a large park, a defined area of winding streets in Dublin City Centre, and a multi-level shopping centre!"

4 of 134 comments (clear)

  1. Simple answer by Guitar+Wizard · · Score: 0, Interesting

    I would just buy a little hand held Wi-Fi detector and run around with it. I'm pretty sure that there are models that could see the AP from pretty far away and also see the SSID even if it's not broadcasted.

    --
    Two freaks, no foes. It takes absolutely nothing to make some people angry.
    1. Re:Simple answer by caryw · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I wish it was that easy. It's pretty hard to find a moving target with a little pocket device that gives signal strength. A better solution would be to buy a nice receiver that can process signal direction (like a newer ICOM or Uniden). Of course you'd still have to fire up the laptop to figure out what channel the SSID you're chasing is on.
      Ham's have these (find the transmitting guy) things all the time. They call them foxhunts. The best anecdote I remember is one year the guy transmitting was an elderly man fishing off a bridge. He was using the fishing poll as the antenna. Nobody wanted to disturb him.
      - Cary
      --Fairfax Underground: Where Fairfax County comes out to play

  2. Triangulation by mikeumass · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Triangulating the location of a wireless access point is no small task even if it is stationary, and you have 3 point of reference.

    However combinting 2 points of reference with signal strength from each point should make the job possible, assuming there is not too much interference from external sources. The hard part will be trying to keep track of how your experimental locations map up to location of persons who could be carrying the access point.

    Maybe you could just look for someone with an antenna sticking out of thier backpack!

  3. Spherical Trigonometry by drewzhrodague · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I asked someone for advice on how to deal with our triangulation, and he said "Spherical Trigonometry," and sent me a URL. I printed it out, and took one look at it. The hair on the back of my neck hasn't stopped standing on end since!

    Of course, we're using GPS coords, in addition to signal strength.

    --
    Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.