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Looking for something to do this weekend? Well, if you have a laptop and a wireless card, you can join dozens of other technophiles with time on their hands in searching out insecure WLANs.
A group of security professionals and enthusiasts later this week will kick off the second WorldWide WarDrive, a week-long coordinated effort to identify wireless LANs and assess their security levels. The first event, held in late Aug. through early Sept., drew participants from 10 states and six countries.
The second wardrive starts Oct. 26 and runs through Nov. 2.
War driving is the practice of canvassing a given neighborhood or city in search of WLANs. Practitioners typically cruise an area, armed with a notebook PC or handheld with a WLAN card and a software program, such as NetStumbler or Kismet, that listens for signals sent out by WLAN access points.
From the information broadcast by the AP, war drivers can tell if the device has WEP (wired equivalent privacy) encryption enabled and other vital information, such as the network's SSID (service set identifier).
There is nothing illegal about simply identifying such networks but connecting to them and using bandwidth and network resources for free is a crime. Which is why the organizers of the WWWD are careful to point out that they do not connect to any of the networks they find. In fact, the group's Web page lists instructions on how to avoid connecting to a network inadvertently.
Those behind the event say they are doing it in the hopes of raising awareness about the problem of WLAN security.
Anyone do this before ? Im just missing a wireless card... [j/k]
:angel:
A group of security professionals and enthusiasts later this week will kick off the second WorldWide WarDrive, a week-long coordinated effort to identify wireless LANs and assess their security levels. The first event, held in late Aug. through early Sept., drew participants from 10 states and six countries.
The second wardrive starts Oct. 26 and runs through Nov. 2.
War driving is the practice of canvassing a given neighborhood or city in search of WLANs. Practitioners typically cruise an area, armed with a notebook PC or handheld with a WLAN card and a software program, such as NetStumbler or Kismet, that listens for signals sent out by WLAN access points.
From the information broadcast by the AP, war drivers can tell if the device has WEP (wired equivalent privacy) encryption enabled and other vital information, such as the network's SSID (service set identifier).
There is nothing illegal about simply identifying such networks but connecting to them and using bandwidth and network resources for free is a crime. Which is why the organizers of the WWWD are careful to point out that they do not connect to any of the networks they find. In fact, the group's Web page lists instructions on how to avoid connecting to a network inadvertently.
Those behind the event say they are doing it in the hopes of raising awareness about the problem of WLAN security.
Anyone do this before ? Im just missing a wireless card... [j/k]
:angel:
