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The Low-End Approach To Wireless Hacking

Posted by timothy on from the not-enough-empty-cans-yet dept.

Adrian writes "Zack Anderson, an MIT student, created a solution to wardriving on a budget: warcarting. The Warcart is a shopping cart retrofitted with just about every sort of wireless sniffing device available. It has pivoting antennas and a smoke grenade launcher. It can even dispense infected USB flash drives. It's part of a talk about subway fare-collection-system vulnerabilities that will be given at Defcon 16 in a few days." "Mostly as a joke," says the site — but only mostly.

14 of 124 comments (clear)

  1. Class? by iXiXi · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I thought that MIT students would want to demonstrate a little more class. War dialing/driving has been around forever. The concept is old school. I am sorry but I feel that there must be projects from MIT students that are more /. worthy that this. I would rather see some medical innovation or manufacturing robotics/theory write up.

    1. Re:Class? by spidercoz · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why...is it against the law to bring a shopping cart full of computer equipment into an airport?

      Of course it is. Doing anything odd or unusual or that makes someone confused or uncomfortable is terrorism.

      --
      "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
    2. Re:Class? by Fred_A · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Of course not. But neither is it to fill you with lead. As long as everybody is having fun it doesn't really matter of course...

      --

      May contain traces of nut.
      Made from the freshest electrons.
  2. Anyone up for a pool? by MiKM · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm gonna start a pool on how long it takes before the guy using this gets 'detained' or otherwise harassed by the gov't for looking suspicious. I give it a month.

    1. Re:Anyone up for a pool? by uglydog · · Score: 2, Insightful

      wait... HE'S the idiot?! HE'S just a nerd playing with his electronics. whoever thinks he looks suspicious would be the idiot. i don't think it's just me with my tech background that can tell the diff. like the over-reaction to the mooninites in boston and in other places, and the over-reaction whenever someone sees some white powder: people need to chill the fuck out. yes, i realize someone took down the twin towers and killed 3000 ppl. but the response to this has been an over-reaction

    2. Re:Anyone up for a pool? by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That's exactly what's wrong with the world today. Be normal, conform, and nobody gets hurt. Dare to be different, dare to leave the path the "normal" people walk on, and you're "suspicious".

      What does he do? He's pushing a cart full of electronics down the road! So? May I only use a cart to push around my groceries? Who said that? Who are you to dictate what has to be in my cart?

      Freedom is first and foremost defined by how much freedom you grant to someone who isn't or doesn't think like everyone else. If your freedom to be what or how you want ends at what is defined as normal or "agreeable", China is a perfectly free country.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    3. Re:Anyone up for a pool? by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Do you really think any cop on the street can identify that for what it is? I'd rather guess he'll be arrested for pushing around something that looks like a highly sophisticated kind of bomb.

      Later the things you list will be brought up, to avoid making the cop look stupid.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  3. Obnoxious. by EchoD · · Score: 3, Insightful

    A shopping cart loaded down with monitoring and recording equipment?
    That's cool. Some tool pushing it around, broadcasting music, and pretending private property is public? That's rather obnoxious.

    The operator seems to be the only difference between an interesting application of technology and some douche nozzle who wants his fifteen minutes of fame by trying to coax people into a conflict just so he can "make a point".

    --
    If I only had a moose...
  4. Uhhh... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Only from MIT would something so stupid get so much attention.

  5. Re:Where's the GPS? by wooferhound · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It really isn't very useful without a GPS Unit. How else would they map out their new Findings ?

    --
    We are Dead Stars looking back Up at the Sky
  6. A serious note by s31523 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    All kidding aside, war-whatever has gotten people's attention. I live in a cubicle-style neighborhood, you know, houses built on top of each other. I have a powerful Wi-Fi antennae and can "see" a dozen Wi-Fi points. When I first moved in, more than half were unsecured, default SSID, default password. Now only 2 are unsecured. Even the layperson has caught on and I believe this is in part of the war driving/flying/carting craze that went on.

  7. Shame on you slashdot by kernelpanicked · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I started looking at the comments before watching the video and every other one was putting this guy down and calling him a douche-$(insertwordhere). After watching the video, it appears that half of Slashdot has no appreciation for feeding the inner geek, and is just pissed off that this guy had live females stop and actually talk to him.

    --
    Ubuntu: If at first you don't succeed, blindly slap a sudo in front of it
  8. charges? by Reality+Master+201 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    At any given moment, you're breaking some law. Disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, etc. etc. Charges are easy to make up. And they don't have to stick, either - the arrest can still be effected. Then there's either some resisting arrest or an accident that results in the cart getting tipped over and all the equipment breaking.

  9. Brilliant by johndmartiniii · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I concur with some fellow above who noted that we must be losing touch with our inner geek. Even if thing is riddled with illegal shit and the guy who created it is kind of an idiot, cheers to him for indulging himself.

    Then again, this comes from a guy who spends ALL of his spare time making wireless thin clients out of old laptops for mounting in picture frames and other surfaces in his house. Gotta get on that solar power next, this shit is getting expensive.

    The point, to hell with all you nay-sayers. Go back to whatever boring, gainfully-employed thing is is that you are doing while the rest of us have fun.

    ;p

    --
    If you don't know what you're doing, you can't make mistakes.