War Tactics

I’ve been doing a little research on a bit of a tangent all stemming from Chris’s post on ‘Unintended and intended use of Wi-Fi by outsiders’.

I was interested firstly in the stealing on bandwidth by unauthorised users of unsecured WiFi networks and found that there is actually a massive movement involved in this.

It’s called ‘Wardrving’ (“Wireless Access Revolution’ driving). Wardriving is an activity consisting of driving around with a Wi-Fi-equipped computer, such as a laptop or a PDA, in one's vehicle, detecting Wi-Fi wireless networks. It is also known (as of 2002) as "WiLDing" (Wireless Lan Driving), originating in the U.S. with the Bay Area Wireless Users Group (BAWUG). It is similar to using a scanner for radio. Many wardrivers will use GPS devices to measure the location of the network find and log it on a website.

Some use home made devices to boost signal strength such as a Pringle can antenna. See below…






Once a suitable location has been found it is then posted onto websites such as www.wardrive.org.uk, where other users can log on and then travel to these locations to exploit the free internet access. One of favorite tools of wardrivers is a software called "Netstumbler", that is also available for some Wi-Fi cards for Pocket PCs. Info can be found on www.netstumbler.com

Also an interesting phenomenon called ‘Warchalking’ has arisen from wardriving. This is a more manual approach to identifying users to a WiFi location. I will explain this in more detail in my next post.

information taken from:
http://mobile.msmobiles.com/i.php?id=50
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardriving

images taken from:
http://suburbia.sindominio.net/IMG/arton127.jpg
http://suburbia.sindominio.net/IMG/jpg/pringles.jpg