Spies around us - War Driving
By: Drivers.com staff
Date: 2008-02-04
The term "war driving" sounds like it might be something a war correspondent does, but it refers to a breed of computer hackers who drive around with their wireless-equipped laptops looking for vulnerable wireless routers to access.
If you have a wireless router in your home or business it will likely have a range of as much as 150 meters. When you boot up your wireless-equipped computer you�ll see how many other routers are in range. Without adequate security your computer is essentially open to other wireless devices.
For most War Drivers, finding your router is a challenge akin to hunting. It's fun to see what you�re not supposed to see. There�s no malicious intent. Free internet access through your computer may be all the war driver is after.
At the higher end of the scale, the serous war driver is out there using sophisticated tools to break through the encryption barrier that is supposed to keep your computer secure (some wireless computer users never even set up encryption). The software tools to do this are often available free over the internet. One such application, Airsnort, describes itself like this:
"AirSnort is a wireless LAN (WLAN) tool which recovers encryption keys. AirSnort operates by passively monitoring transmissions, computing the encryption key when enough packets have been gathered.�
In other words, the war driver is sitting within range of your wireless network and patiently gathering enough information to crack your system.
"AirSnort," says WindowSecurity.com, "is a program that listens to the wireless radio transmissions of a network and gathers them into a meaningful manner. After enough time has passed (sometimes in a matter of hours) and data are gathered, analytical tools process the data until the network security is broken. At that point everything that crosses the network can be read in plain text."
It�s a scary thought how vulnerable our computers can be. It looks like there's no real privacy anywhere in this age of electronically available information.
For their part, the war drivers don�t generally see themselves as bad people. On the contrary, many consider themselves as providing a service in revealing how insecure our computers really are and as part of the solution rather than the problem.
Some of the legal aspects of war driving are up in the air. One of the most controversial aspects which gained some notoriety a few years ago was " warchalking," a practice in which groups of war drivers would put chalk marks on pavements to indicate where they could find unsecured networks and gain free wireless access to the internet using someone else's paid service provider.
Is this legal? "There are laws, which apply," said one expert on technology and law , "but they weren�t drafted with warchalking in mind. So we don't have cases."
An updated version of warchalking is using Google Earth to map successes . "Going around the neighborhood and mapping all the wireless networks may be nothing more than a geeky hobby but it can sure teach you a lot," says Matt Perry, a war driving enthusiast, "and viewing the results in Google Earth is icing on the cake. Perry�s web site describes in detail how to achieve this.
However, there's more to war driving than merely driving around and looking for free web access.
"Beginners waste many weekends wardriving their local neighborhoods or business districts," says one war driving blogger," describing this activity as "probing for low-hanging fruit � and a waste of valuable learning time."
"It's more to an individuals benefit to learn an assortment of wireless LAN penetration tools and work toward the goal of gaining useful information," the blogger adds. "Learning the correct application of tools and techniques (not to mention keeping up-to-date) takes time and hard work in a closed environment, but yields much in the way of information technology."
According to the same blogger, "The current demand for wireless-security professionals is staggering on an international level. Those who have taken the time to hone their skills in the use of available tools and the latest penetration techniques will be financially rewarded with a great career. I urge you to consider practicing, studying and reading random comments much like this from randoms like myself rather than driving around from neighborhood to neighborhood hoping to send an e-mail through someone�s cable modem."
Getting noticed by potential customers, the blogger says, is best done by giving them a quick demo of hacking tools and keeping in mind that "these demonstrations should ALWAYS be done with the permission of a person in authority at the client organization � Doing otherwise can lead to criminal prosecution."
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