War Chalking

I came across an interesting article in the Tech News section of my local paper and after a quick google search found an article relating to the new craze with hackers ...

'War chalking': New hacking threat to firms?

Business leaders are warning a new craze called "war chalking" can leave firms open to hackers.

It involves drawing symbols in chalk on walls and pavements to mark points where signals from nearby office networks can be tapped into.

Anyone with a suitably-equipped laptop can then switch on and surf the web ......

Full article here

If you are running a wireless network for your business it might pay to keep an eye on the externals of your building for any strange symbols etc ... that may indicate a breach in your security.

I think we will see a proliferation of this form of hacking until wireless security is improved. Personally, I havent seen any chalkings, though there is not much wireless activity in my close vicinity.


BTW, This was already discussed here.

I think most warchalkers are not "up to bad things"
A lot of warchalkers are themselves "volunteers" and share their own (broadband) wireless network with the public.

I personaly would like to be able to surf the web wireless on a nice sunny beach, or in a small community park.


I'm currently testing WI-FI with a small local ISP and some other friends and other "volunteers"...
I hope that WI-FI has a good "clean" future... If people secure their boxes properly, it'll be just as "safe" as surfing the web..

Forgive me ..... news takes a little longer to flow Down Under :) .....

I have been back at work a while and haven't been here as often as I would like and missed the original post, thanks for pointing it out.

I did do a search on "War Chalking" before posting .... didn't show up in the results, sorry people for the duplication.

btw why would a hacker mark the territory where he's going to hack... self incriminating....

Quote:

---

btw why would a hacker mark the territory where he's going to hack... self incriminating....

---

It is sort of a grey area whether this is hacking or not. If you Wireless Network Card detects an Access Point and picks up an IP Address, are you a hax0r??

I think that whole idea behind warchalking is to inform people of geographical locations where they can pick up free Internet access through misconfigured Wireless Networks, not necessarily to get up to no good.

Anyone who has ever played with street chalk as a kid should know that the chalk become smeared or washed away when it rains.

In order for this to even work you need LOCATION, LOCATION, & LOCATION

Personally I think this isn't anything to worry about I mean if you do manage to get a signal your still going to need some time to setup & time on getting the dailup even if you manage to get some chalk and write down info about it and write about the signaling on some encripted chalk scribbleing so that you can come back later to that spot or have a friend check it out there is still the issue of standing around and waiting for it to work.

Its a wireless broadband network. It really doesnt take too long to set your wireless access point to dhcp an ip address in. Literally less than 5 seconds after you ipconfig release and renew. Data travels faster over a wireless network than dialup, faster than dsl even. What my point is, it doesnt take long. What is more important is, when are they going to come up with GOOD security for wireless networks? So this kind of stuff wont happen as much anymore.