My summer of war driving

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http://www.computerworld.com/mobiletopics/mobile/story/0,10801,97352,00.html

Opinion by Demetrios Lazarikos
NOVEMBER 10, 2004
COMPUTERWORLD

For most people, summer is about taking a vacation with family or
heading to a secluded place to get away. Earlier this year, I read an
article about the number of wireless hacks that were increasing
globally. What I found interesting was that the hacks were pretty
basic and that most of the information on how to break into default
systems, how to look for Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) being enabled
and other wireless steps could be found in a Google search.

I had decided at the beginning of the summer that I wasn't going to
take any downtime or a vacation per se. Instead, I would validate
through "war driving" in five cities that wireless networking isn't
ready for prime time. My itinerary involved Omaha; Chicago; Ann Arbor,
Mich.; Denver and Atlanta. War driving is driving around an area with
a laptop computer and an 802.11 network card to identify the presence
of wireless networks.

One common thread through this mission was that the cities involved
had some aspect of high-tech or higher education with an emphasis on
IT security. Another common thread was that I had friends and family
in these cities, so I had a place to stay.

Let me preface my experience with wireless networks. I embrace new
technologies and try to understand how to make the workplace safe with
security controls. It's not uncommon for individuals or organizations
to speed up the process of implementation and not put security
controls in place. I've been involved with many aspects of security
and try to be proactive by educating. In my opinion, wireless security
can be implemented safely, effectively and efficiently.

While on this mission, it was critical for me to identify if the
following could be picked up from the war drive:

1. If WEP was enabled. The WEP encryption method was designed to
    provide wireless networks with the same security available in
    wired networks; however, there are some challenges with this standard.

2. The presence of the service set identifier (SSID), the name
    assigned to a wireless network. Usually, the SSID comes by default
    using the vendor's name and should be changed to something
    nondescript.

With these two pieces of information, an unauthorized user could be
able to acquire access to a wireless network. Think about it. You're
surfing the Net at home or in the office, and someone just hops onto
your network connection. With information about whether or not WEP is
disabled and SSID default settings, an unauthorized user could access
your documents, financials or other sensitive information.

Packing my car with the necessary gear -- my Dell Inspiron laptop, a
newly purchased Orinoco wireless network card, lots of CDs and my
wireless 2-GHz antenna (code-named Jasmine) -- I started a
cross-country trip from my home in Denver.

snip


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My summer of war driving