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Anyone do wardriving? February 19, 2008

Posted by novaaesa in Computers, Linux.
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
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DISCLAIMER: If you happen to be a police dude or equivalent, the content of this post is erm… fictitious. Otherwise, yeah read ahead.

Okay now we have that disclaimer thingy out of the road (even though it most probably holds absolutely no legal power) I will get into the juicy details. So yes, I heard about wardriving a while ago and had always wanted to give it a try. It didn’t really work too well in Kempsey because the houses are too far apart and not many people used wireless routers. After moving to Newcastle, I decided to give it a try again.

I’ve only done it 3 times so far but it’s been pretty awesome so far. I only have one other person so far that I’ve gone with so far (one of my house mates). He’s been driving, and I’ve been in the back with two laptops. I have my new laptop running Linux and one of my housemates laptops running Vista. The setup that we’ve been using is me running a combination of Kismet and aircrack-ng and the Vista laptop being used to actually connect to the network once they have been found.

Surprisingly enough there are heaps and heaps of open networks around. We haven’t even had to bother trying to crack WEP or WPA yet, it’s just easier to get the open ones! We found a few access points with pretty good speeds as well. A few times, I think they might have caught onto what we were doing, because at one of the places where we were accessing a wifi network this lady came out and was walking straight towards us. Needless to say we speed off extremely quickly.

Anyway, the moral of the story is: wardriving = fun, but stay away from angry people. Also, it might be a good idea not to do it in your neighbourhood in case someone recognises your car.

Comments»

1. hugo - February 20, 2008

Hehehe nice idea!!!

That remembers me spy-movies where the guy sets computers inside the van to watch cameras.

I tryed to do that once, but with the car in movement. It didnt worked well, because my wifi was jumping from AP to AP so fast that it didnt get any working ip.

2. kwiksand - February 20, 2008

Many a time, back in the day.

It was just too tempting to go and abuse someone elses bandwidth when the usual Australian home internet connection was 128k or thereabouts.. Sucking 5mbit was good.

3. novaaesa - February 20, 2008

Yah, the trick is to drive sloooowly, and have one computer with AP sniffing apps. (like Kismet) and another computer ready to connect.

By the way, diving slowly without looking creepy is much harder than you think. We got lots of evil stares and people turning the lights on and looking out the window at us.

4. Dr Small - February 20, 2008

Although I have never done it, I think it would be fun. But if you are driving in broad daylight, you might look less suspicious. Also, have the driver carry a map with him on the steering wheel.

Anyone who glances while you are driving slowly may think you are just lost and consulting the map. :)

5. freduardo - February 20, 2008

Hehehe.

This looks like a lot of fun.
Might try the same thing with a mate of mine.

Here in Belgium, there are still plenty of idiots who leave there wireless networks unprotected.

And as for stealth:
Put a laptop in a backpack or the trunk of your car (with some PCMCIA and USB dongles on it) and ssh into it using a smartphone or PDA. No-one will suspect anything then ;)

6. mynameistux - August 26, 2008

you don’t need to carry a map, I have google earth pins in the houses that have good speeds, when you find a new one, you add a pin, and drive off. uh I mean… did I say that out loud?