Tag: Wardriving

Nerdy Stuff Nerds Do

I was getting ready to leave work when a thought came to me. Why not WarDrive tonight. Within sixty seconds I was good to go.

My coat was on. I had gathered my stuff. I was getting ready to leave work when a thought came to me. Why not WarDrive tonight. Within sixty seconds I was good to go.

I went to the Android Market and downloaded Wigle. All I know is it says it’s for WarDriving.

The trigger for all of this was bringing my new tablet to work. It has no cell service, but there’s WiFi everywhere! It was worth sacrificing the battery to unleash my inner geek.

In case you don’t know WarDriving is a remnant of the dawn of WiFi. Innocently most networks were unprotected. When you war drive you just log all the networks you encounter. It’s all done in software using the tablet’s GPS. Hands free!

There are over 500 WiFi hotspots in my path from Hartford to Hamden. That’s not bad considering my survey was taken from the middle of the road.

You have given your hotspots some interesting names. There are:

WiFi Orgy
can you see this
USS Enterprise
FastFlamingo
House Of Rock
Manfish
BigRedApple
Private
Pickles the Clown
The203

Nearly all are now protected with some form of encryption. The ones that aren’t probably have ‘inside security’ the way a hotel might.

I’ve got the data. I’ve looked at it. Now it gets thrown out. Some pursuits are for nerdy sake alone.

Pardon Me While I Wardrive

The bad news is these APs give off enough data that a company scouring the roads, like Google, will be able to associate your anonymous Internet surfing with your physical location and this happens even if the signal is encrypted!

It’s such a beautifully geeky term: wardriving. I was wardriving last night. I wardrove from dinner to the station and then wardrove home. Actually with Ann at the wheel after dinner I was wardriven.

But I digress.

Wardriving is the act of searching for Wi-Fi wireless networks by a person in a moving vehicle, using a portable computer or PDA.

To quote the commercials, “There’s an app for that.” I loaded WiFiFoFum on my iPhone and fired it up.

Just driving across New Haven brought 274 access points. My drive home produced another 473 with the only signal free spot corresponding to the desolate exit ramp/overpass/interchage connecting I-91 with CT-40.

The good news is nowadays most APs are encrypted. In most cases you couldn’t sit in a car watching in-the-clear web traffic fly by or park outside most houses to ‘borrow’ WiFi (something I’ve done more than once in years past).

The bad news is these APs still give off enough data that a company scouring the roads, like Google, will be able to associate your anonymous Internet surfing with your physical location and this happens even if the signal is encrypted!

The map below is clickable so you can get a feel for the clusters of these tiny transceivers and what kind of data they’re revealing. Some of the markers represent multiple APs in close proximity. It’s all very interesting and at least a tiny bit scary.


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