Wardriving

[Sir Krustin]

Anyone here use wireless networks?

Just came across some interesting stuff on the internet about WAP in general, and apparently a whole subculture of geek has sprung up looking to access peoples wireless networks in order to get free roaming access to the internet with their laptops and PDAs.

One neat thing is a lot of people actually don't care about other people accessing their network, and sometimes encourage it!

Others are concerned about security (hackers, et.al.) and try to enable WEP (wired equivalence protocol - a security protocol built into 802.11b hardware) only to find out that WEP is easily cracked!

Thus emerges the wardriving movement. These people run around with laptops (or PDAs) equipped with wireless network adapters and GPS units mapping out wireless networks and effortlessly cracking the WEP encryption. Motives range from simple "'coz I can do it" to an effort to heighten public awareness to the threat.

How does this relate to you? The federal government of the states considers WAP to be a terrorist threat in that unsecured networks give terrorists avenues to insert viral content into the internet in an essentially untraceable manner.

Richard Harris, special advisor to POTUS, has been saying some frightening things. One of them is that ISPs would be required to make sure that you are running a secure node. Users of alternate o/ses (like me, or anyone else that likes anything other than winblows) might be offended at the requirement of using an ISP supplied firewall - Harris thinks it's perfectly reasonable to force people to do this.