Wardriving

Wardriving is the act of searching for Wi-Fi wireless networks by a person usually in a moving vehicle, using a laptop or smartphone. Software for wardriving is freely available on the Internet. Warbiking or warcycling is similar to wardriving, but is done from a moving bicycle or motorcycle. This practice is sometimes facilitated by mounting a Wi-Fi enabled device on the vehicle. Warwalking, or warjogging, is similar to wardriving, but is done on foot rather than from a moving vehicle. Warrailing, or wartraining, is similar to wardriving, but is done on trains, tram, buses or by any other means of public transport. Wardroning is accomplished with a drone. War driving originated from wardialing, a method popularized by a character played by Matthew Broderick in the film WarGames, and named after that film. War dialing consists of dialing every phone number in a specific sequence in search of modems. Warbiking or warcycling is similar to wardriving, but is done from a moving bicycle or motorcycle. This practice is sometimes facilitated by mounting a Wi-Fi enabled device on the vehicle. Warwalking, or warjogging, is similar to wardriving, but is done on foot rather than from a moving vehicle. The disadvantages of this method are slower speed of travel (but leading to discovery of more infrequently discovered networks) and the absence of a convenient computing environment. Consequently, handheld devices such as pocket computers, which can perform such tasks while users are walking or standing, have dominated this practice. Technology advances and developments in the early 2000s expanded the extent of this practice. Advances include computers with integrated Wi-Fi, rather than CompactFlash (CF) or PC Card (PCMCIA) add-in cards in computers such as Dell Axim, Compaq iPAQ and Toshiba pocket computers starting in 2002. More recently, the active Nintendo DS and Sony PSP enthusiast communities gained Wi-Fi abilities on these devices. Further, many newer smartphones integrate Wi-Fi and Global Positioning System (GPS). Warrailing, or Wartraining, is similar to wardriving, but is done on a train or tram rather than from a slower more controllable vehicle. The disadvantages of this method are higher speed of travel (resulting in less discovery of more infrequently discovered networks) and often limited to major roads with a higher traffic. Warkitting is a combination of wardriving and rootkitting. In a warkitting attack, a hacker replaces the firmware of an attacked router. This allows them to control all traffic for the victim, and could even permit them to disable TLS by replacing HTML content as it is being downloaded. Warkitting was identified by Tsow, Jakobsson, Yang, Wardrivers use a Wifi-equipped device together with a GPS device to record the location of wireless networks. The results can then be uploaded to websites like WiGLE, openBmap or Geomena where the data is processed to form maps of the network neighborhood. There are also clients available for smartphones running Android that can upload data directly. For better range and sensitivity, antennas are built or bought, and vary from omnidirectional to highly directional.