Wireless Hunters on the Prowl

Source: Wired

Mike Outmesguine leans against a Chevy Suburban packed with Wi-Fi, GPS and ham radio gadgets, gazing out at the necklace of hilltop radio towers that surround Los Angeles' Chinatown.

"The cool thing about war driving is that it makes what's invisible -- the wireless Internet -- visible," the Southern California Wireless Users Group co-founder says, grinning. "I worked on radio frequency jamming systems in the U.S. Air Force, and when I got out I remember returning home and suddenly being aware of wireless waves everywhere."
Outmesguine, a Gulf War veteran and Los Angeles-based wireless technology consultant, isn't alone in that fascination. During the third WorldWide WarDrive taking place now through July 5, participants in dozens of U.S. cities roam around with Wi-Fi-sniffing gear, logging access points that will then be collected, shared and analyzed.

Organized by a loose-knit group of security professionals and wireless enthusiasts, planners say the WWWD serves to raise awareness of the need for home and corporate users to secure wireless networks from unwanted access or snooping.

The first drive, held in 2002, logged 10,000 access points. A second drive held six weeks later documented 25,000. This year, exponentially higher figures are expected due to Wi-Fi's growing popularity. The group hopes to broaden awareness of the need to lock down wireless LANs with WEP (wired equivalent privacy) or other encryption tools.

Organizers gather data from the weeklong WWWD to create a statistical analysis of access points. Results will be presented by founder and lead organizer Chris Hurley, aka Roamer, in a presentation at this year's DefCon 11, a hacker convention.

While Wi-Fi fans around the country prepared for the WWWD, Wired News joined SoCalWUG co-founders Outmesguine and Frank Keeney for a war driving excursion from Los Angeles' Chinatown through the city's financial core. In just 40 minutes, we logged nearly 400 access points, and many were unsecured. Software on Keeney's laptop allowed us to view some of the actual contents of network traffic, revealing detail as precise as file names and user names.

Both Outmesguine and Keeney drive antenna-spiked SUVs equipped with amateur radio equipment, GPS units and multiple PDAs and laptops running applications such as Netstumbler and Kismet.