Talk Back: Wireless Hot Spots; are you Warchalking?

[dang]

Checkout our latest Talk Back: Wireless Hot Spots; are you Warchalking? (http://news.designtechnica.com/talkback13.html)

[Ioman]

Good article. I have not had a chance to look around Portland here to see if those markings are on the ground. I wonder how many hotspots are publicly available? I know that T-Mobile and Intel just announced that they will be creating hotspots around 50 states in the US, but you have to pay a monthly fee for this service.

[kepaloha]

Yes you most likely will have to pay a monthly service, but as we all know, there are ways around that. I hope that most people out there are honest about it. The spots are out there, you just have to look for them.

[IronSerif]

Good article...

I remember last month, I was reading a magazine in Barnes & Nobles (might have been T3), and they had a little article about this as well.

I don't think it's picked up too much around here in Baltimore

[kepaloha]

I hope it catches on out there in your area. From time to time you could always just go for a walk out there and look around for those symbols. Alot of the places are not cafe's that you can just go to. some of them are actual office buildings that have a wireless network, but they don't know that their wireless boundries my go as far out as on the street some where.

So in a sense you could just walk down town somewhere, find an internet connection, mark the sidwalk. You and all of your buddies could meet up there for a faster internet connection ( if you don't have DSL or anything ) remember these wireless connections are not stopped by walls or concrete. They could be anywere. It's just a matter of walking your city and finding the spots, then telling your friends about them.

Here in my town, out side one of our convention centers, there is a wireless hot spot. But that spot is only hot when there is a convention in town. That's about every other month.

[RageSlave]

Here's a pretty good article about Wardriving. A local news site did an expose' on it.Wardriving (http://www.thekcrachannel.com/technology/1984721/detail.html)

Decent read.

[Archon]

I dont think there are any wireless networks in my state :rolleyes:

[kepaloha]

WOW! very nice article about Wardriving. That's the same thing you would do in your local city but you would walk around, and then chalk the spot so you can come back to it later. Then again it would be kind of funny looking outside your window and seeing someone sitting on the sidewalk with a laptop.

But that's what happens when you have a wireless network. What some people do when they move to a new neighborhood or an appartment complex is to buy a wireless network card for their computer or laptop and turn it on. In an appartment complex, it's a pretty good chance that someone there is running a wireless network. If they are, then you now have free internet service. w00t w00t.

Just like IOMAN was thinking of getting a wireless router, but if he did, then if his neighbors were smart they would get a wireless network card and they would have free internet access all compliments of IOMAN. I sure would like to be his neighbor..

[neogeek]

Would wardriving not replace the use for the average guy?

I do not live in an Downtown urban area. I live in San Diego and have to drive (or ride motorcycle) everywhere. Unlike a city say like NewYork or London where there is a usefully and allmost manditory public transit system. What this means is I am usally going to fast to look at the sidwalk or side of a building for a "chalking".
What I do use, is netstumbler and ministumbler with GPS.
I then can place them in real time or later with a map to know the access points. I can share this map or list of GPS points with SSID names with anyone that I please or even post on my website.

The question is what good is a smear on the ground when it rains? when I cant see it from the road?

I think WarChalking is cool for visually seeing an accesspoint when I am not using the tools. Yes for the west coast which is heavly car centric, warchalking may not be as usefull, well it is not for me

[Ioman]

Originally posted by neogeek
Would wardriving not replace the use for the average guy?

I do not live in an Downtown urban area. I live in San Diego and have to drive (or ride motorcycle) everywhere. Unlike a city say like NewYork or London where there is a usefully and allmost manditory public transit system. What this means is I am usally going to fast to look at the sidwalk or side of a building for a "chalking".
What I do use, is netstumbler and ministumbler with GPS.
I then can place them in real time or later with a map to know the access points. I can share this map or list of GPS points with SSID names with anyone that I please or even post on my website.

The question is what good is a smear on the ground when it rains? when I cant see it from the road?

I think WarChalking is cool for visually seeing an accesspoint when I am not using the tools. Yes for the west coast which is heavly car centric, warchalking may not be as usefull, well it is not for me

Good points. I think that Warchalking refers to the idea of makring or using symbols to represent wireless hotspots, does it necessarily mean using real chalk on the streets? (I don't know). I am sure that companies do not want their hotspots to be publicly known, so how else can you mark these spots? Neogeek brought up a good point with the driving situation. Someone need to put up road side signs or mark on the side of the buildings where they can easily be accessible.

What we need is an underground webside which maps out hotspots in certain cities... :P

[Archon]

I would imagine warchalking only works in Arizona


...one rain storm and you got no more chalkage ;)

[DOA]

Originally posted by kepaloha
WOW! very nice article about Wardriving. That's the same thing you would do in your local city but you would walk around, and then chalk the spot so you can come back to it later. Then again it would be kind of funny looking outside your window and seeing someone sitting on the sidewalk with a laptop.

But that's what happens when you have a wireless network. What some people do when they move to a new neighborhood or an appartment complex is to buy a wireless network card for their computer or laptop and turn it on. In an appartment complex, it's a pretty good chance that someone there is running a wireless network. If they are, then you now have free internet service. w00t w00t.

Just like IOMAN was thinking of getting a wireless router, but if he did, then if his neighbors were smart they would get a wireless network card and they would have free internet access all compliments of IOMAN. I sure would like to be his neighbor..

Actually IOMAN can get a wireless router without worry if he enables encryption. Has anyone been able to get past wep encryption? Or perhaps a piece of software to break encryption or dechipher passwords? Not interested in hacking into a wireless lan, just curious to know how safe the wep encryption actually is.

[neogeek]

http://airsnort.shmoo.com/
WEP is not SAFE at all..... it's just time and free CPU cycles

http://sourceforge.net/projects/wepcrack/
WEPCrack is a tool that cracks 802.11 WEP encryption keys using the latest discovered weakness of RC4 key scheduling.

[DOA]

I am going to setup an additional lan with an extra wireless hub I have to see how well these work. And I guess how poorly RC4 encryption doesnt work. Guess I have to build my linux box back up though cause these utils are only for linux. I will search for one for windows first. Maybe write an article on wireless security if we dont have one yet. What do you think IOMAN?

[neogeek]

Try using this... will leave your laptop or Desktop intact after the scan.. or what ever you decide to use it for..
Has Snort and other cool stuff.. like NESSUS..

http://fire.dmzs.com/

FIRE is a portable bootable cdrom based distribution with the goal of providing an immediate environment to perform forensic analysis, incident response, data recovery, virus scanning and vulnerability assessment.

[Ioman]

Originally posted by DOA
I am going to setup an additional lan with an extra wireless hub I have to see how well these work. And I guess how poorly RC4 encryption doesnt work. Guess I have to build my linux box back up though cause these utils are only for linux. I will search for one for windows first. Maybe write an article on wireless security if we dont have one yet. What do you think IOMAN?

Sounds good to me. Coordinate things with Neogeek so we do not have multiple articles coming in on the same topic. I will be posting one from Neogeek today.