War Driving to Disney World

ÐŽ§War driving to Disney WorldЎЁ

Summer of 2004

War driving involves roaming around a neighborhood looking for the increasingly numerous ÐŽ§hot spotsЎЁ where high-speed InternetÐŽ¦s access is free. 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.

My brother Carlos a ÐŽ§full time computer geekЎЁ and I had decided at the beginning of the summer that we were taking the family to Disney but I wasnÐŽ¦t going to take any downtime or a vacation per se. Instead, I would validate through ÐŽ§war driving around an area with a laptop computer and an 802.11 network card to identify the presence of wireless networks.ЎЁ Let me preface, my brotherÐŽ¦s experience with wireless networks. He embraces new technologies and tries to understand how to make the workplace safe with security controls. My little brother has actually taught me every thing I know about IT.

Packing my car with the necessary gear and my brothers Dell Inspiron laptop, a newly purchased Orinoco wireless network card, lots of CDs and my wireless 2-GHz antenna we started the trip to Disney. We got on the turnpike and I was hoping for some peace and quiet from our kids but I should have known better,ЎЁ kids will be kids.ЎЁ While on this mission, it was critical for us to identify if the following could be picked up from the war drive.

Think about it. YouÐŽ¦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.

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 .The presence of the service set identifier (SSID), the name assigned to a wireless network. Usually, the SSID comes by default using the vendorÐŽ¦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. Upon our first rest stop we exited near little town that was almost unpopulated .We knew that most likely nothing was going to pop- up on the screen not even a those annoying advertising pop- ups .

We saw a waffle house and decided to eat breakfast my brother told just leave the laptop on the floor and I did. When we got back to the car and pulled off my brother noticed that it started to pick up multiple wireless access points. I