War Driving, War Flying and War Chalking

The advance of technology has produced new problems which were undreamed of just a few short years ago. At first computers were incredibly expensive, requiring millions of dollars to build and staffs of dozens of specialists to operate. These computers were "safe", in that they were not connected to the outside world at all. Thus, the only type of break-in or criminal activity that could occur had to be done from a console terminal on the premises. And since these monsters were actually not doing very much of commercial value, there really were not many (if any) people who desired to compromise them.

As the technology improved, the price of computers came down and they began appearing in more and more places, including universities, banks and phone companies. And, of course, it became necessary to interconnect these computers because they are orders of magnitude more valuable if they can send data back and forth to each other.

With these interconnections came criminal and not-so-criminal activities - what later became known as hacking. These were people who for various reasons broke into computers. Sometimes it was just for the intellectual thrill, proving one's capabilities, and sometimes it was for more nefarious reasons (stealing money or secrets). However, all of these break-in attempts were controllable to a certain extent because the entry points into a computer or network could be identified and controlled.

The advent of extraordinarily inexpensive modems made breaking into systems even more popular. If you remember a movie called Wargames, then you already know of at least one common hacking method - War Dialing. This consists of setting a modem to dial all of the numbers within a particular telephone exchange (a prefix) in order to find those that are modems. Those systems that identify themselves as modems are then targeted for hacking attempts.

Inexpensive modems made maintaining network security more difficult from several points of view. First, of course, more people could afford to purchase modems and thus the number of potential attackers increased dramatically. Second, people within the organization could also purchase a modem and attach it to their computer system without letting their IT department know. This added a new entry point into a network - an entry point which was almost certainly lacking any kind of security.

The limitation, of course, was that a phone line had to be purchased and installed, and thus the presence of the modem could be detected from examining phone bills or following cables. It also generally required approvals and some knowledge to get a phone line installed and operational - not a lot, but enough to deter many people from doing so themselves.

The advent of inexpensive wireless network access points changed this game entirely. Now, for the price of dinner and a movie, someone could purchase an access point (a piece of hardware that allows wireless modems to gain access to a network). Installation is as simple as plugging in a cable. And since the default for most of these devices is to allow anyone to access the network at any time without encryption, it's trivially easy to compromise security.

War Driving

A whole new type of hacking has emerged - that of finding and exploiting these wireless access points. All you need is a computer, a wireless card (802.11b) and a GPS antenna. Optionally, you can add an antenna to the wireless card to increase the range.

What you do is drive around (thus the name "War Driving", using your equipment to attempt to detect wireless communications. The GPS unit is used by the software to pin down to within a few feet the location of the access point.

If you want to find out more about war driving, you can visit http://www.wardriving.com.

War Flying

War flying is a variant on War Driving. It is similar, except that an airplane is used. This is not very common but has been done on occasion.

War Chalking

Once an access point is found it is often marked with special symbols. Oftentimes a hacker will simply draw some symbols with chalk (hence the name War Chalking), identifying the access point to any other hacker that is in the area.

You can find out more about war chalking by visiting http://www.warchalking.org - it's a fascinating site with lots of interesting data.