General Wardriving Tutorial

Texas law seems pretty clear about it...

33A.04. Theft of Telecommunications Service

(a) A person commits an offense if the person knowingly obtains or attempts to obtain telecommunications service to avoid or cause another person to avoid a lawful charge for that service by using:

(1) a telecommunications access device without the authority or consent of the subscriber or lawful holder of the device or pursuant to an agreement for an exchange of value with the subscriber or lawful holder of the device to allow another person to use the device;

I think Plastic did a good job it is one of his first posts, and I think you all should cut him some slack he is trying which is what it takes to become something great. Without a start there can be no journey.....

I guess I am a wardriver and didn't even know it. I use a belkin WIFI card @ 802.11 for connecting to the various Flying J networks that I am a subscriber to. The Belkin software lists any network that it receives and the signal strenghs available. In some locations, it shows several other networks that are also received in that area. In one such location, the strongest signal was from a local buisness that I connected to automatically, and actually had to change my parking location to be able to connect to the Flying J network. Since then, the Flying J corp has had to complain to the local buisness and force them to encrypt their wireless network, so that the Flying J customers could connect to their system in certain areas of their parking lot.
Now, was I breaking the law, when I connected to this buisness's network, even if it overroad the system I am legally intitled to connect to??

I can understand the views of the legality of wardriving. I can understand people being upset that such a tutorial was placed publicly. I agree that this tutorial will teach script kiddies and others who want to act malicously how to wardrive.

But I'm happy such tutorials are out there for myself and other "admins" to read. So that we can learn the mind set of these individuals and how they perform such acts. So that we can better secure our networks.

Look you can learn to do just about every illegal thing that there is to do to a computer or network at AO. Just beacuse Plastic dos'nt sugar coat it he should'nt be negged ...
I'am right and you know it. This is a place to learn, don't forget that.....now you all know how simple it is to wardrive maybe we can take it upon our selfs to learn how to stop this agaist our own nw.

There is at least one legit use for wardriving: detecting an unauthorized WAP on your system. Suppose you're the admin for a large system at a large facility. You may have policies against wireless networking (for security purposes), but dollars to donuts some yahoo will try to install a WAP on his own. While there are ways of preventing this, and other ways of detecting it, doing a bit of wardriving within your facility can be useful.

Ok kool tutorial told me some intresting stuff. Ok I have a wireless network and the in your tutorial it talk about router well I have got an object called Wireless Acess Point/Router, and i want to know hoe do i configure the login for this thing. so not everyone can get it. and i know how to add passowrd to shared folders are their any other problems that i could have with security of my network.

There were some posts where people were saying that if you post stuff like plastic did that it will attract script kiddies/crackers. So?? You think there are none that read here ?? If they dont read it here they will just find it somewhere else. How about www.wardriving.com ?? That site and its links will tell you way more than plastics article, WAY MORE. I just dont see the reason of complaining about what he posted. All information about security will be pretty much the same whether its coming from the crackers or from the CS professionals. There will also be differences but then thats why its good to read from both sources so you can get a full picture.

People seem to be confusing wardriving with hacking, when in fact it is neither. Wardriving is basically driving around to find signals that report they are open. That's right, these networks are already being broadcasted out. Wardriving is similar to walking down the neighehborhood looking for people who have wooden signs in their front yard that says "I HAVE A NETWORK" and then jotting down which house has what according to their sign. Wireless networks and WAP's operate in the exact same fashion. By continually boradcasting their network information they are putting a sign up. Wardriving is looking for signs, not breaking into, taking advantage of, nor any such nonsense.


People may also confuse wardriving with cracking, and thus call it illegal. No, even under Texas law (stated on an bove post) where it is illegal to attempt to gain service, it is not illegal to *discover* a service. By attempting to gain access to that network )ie. logging in) the law is broken, but not by just knocking on the door (in which case, those who wardrive already know we just filter the packets they are already sending out, we don't send any back). And no, the excuse "knocking on a door only leads to one thing" is also nonsense because you can not preassume everyone is a script kiddie that cracks everything they come across. I repeat. Wardriving is not illegal because it is watching, looking, and knocking on doors, never trying to gain access. Hell, wardriiving works (repeated) because they are already sending out the "do you want to join? this is my network name!" packets, with the programs we run merely sniffing the air. Once finding a network through wardriving and then trying to access by logging in, then you are attempting to have a service, which is illegal.

I've begun to notice there are far too many overly zealous computer nerds here, who assume that anything not done in a computer class must be illegal. But this is generally not the case, especially when you can compare something like wardriving to trying to find a random nickle on the ground.

What kind of wireless card would you need to weardrive whats the difference between PCMCIA and a PC Card .