WARDRIVING WIRELESS LANS

Wardriving Wireless LANs

Abstract

War driving, also called access point mapping, is the act of locating and possibly exploiting connections to wireless local area networks while driving around a city or elsewhere. To do war driving, you need a vehicle, a computer (which can be a laptop), a wireless Ethernet card set to work in promiscuous mode, and some kind of an antenna which can be mounted on top of or positioned inside the car. Because a wireless LAN may have a range that extends beyond an office building, an outside user may be able to intrude into the network, obtain a free Internet connection, and possibly gain access to company records and other resources.

Wardriving Wireless LANs

Introduction

Some people have made a sport out of war driving, in part to demonstrate the ease with which wireless LANs can be compromised. With an omnidirectional antenna and a geophysical positioning system (GPS), the war driver can systematically map the locations of 802.11b wireless access points. Companies that have a wireless LAN are urged to add security safeguards that will ensure only intended users have access. Safeguards include the use of the Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) encryption standard, IPsec, or Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA), together with a firewall or DMZ. (Botelho, 2009)

Wirelesses LANs are vulnerable to War Driving

War Driving, can be effective because hackers drive around using scanners and probing devices like Netstumbler to find ill configured access point locations so that they can enter a wireless LAN. Hackers even post maps and data on the Internet identifying LANs that were easy to penetrate in the past. “High-grade antennas that produce strong yet tight signals” Phifer, can be used to help keep war drivers at bay because their narrow signals may not reach the street. War driving is similar, but its goal is to locate WLANs and attempt to access them. War driver involves driving around cities, equipped with a suitable antenna and software, looking for exposed networks in an effort to demonstrate and educate the vulnerabilities of WLANs. (Lopez, 2009)

The software needed can surprisingly be found for free on a number of websites. One such free software, NetStumbler, is designed to pickup WLANs. Once a wireless signal is identified it takes all the information one would need to access that network at later time. When war drivers find a vulnerable AP some like to leave their mark. This is known as war chalking and allows other war drivers to see the SSID, the security status, and the signal strength of the network. Although most war drivers do war driving to show they can; some have other plans. Once access to a network is gained one can easily spam thousands, or come across delicate information. Many consumers are unaware that hackers can gain access to their network with such ease; as a result few consumers think to protect their networks.

War driving countermeasures

Countermeasures to protect your wireless network from war driving and hackers in general must be well planned and rigorously maintained ...