The third World War Drive, organized by the WWWD is in process with findings to be presented at DefCon in Las Vegas later this month.
But what exactly is a 'war drive' and do you care? "War Driving" is the process of driving around with a client device such as a laptop or PDA with an installed WNIC (wireless NIC) , 'detection software' - software, such as NetStumbler, and, usually, a high gain antenna, searching for wireless Access Points. War driving goes on all the time these days, but the WWWD actually goes to the next step by organizing the information and presenting their findings.
Wired went along with a few of the war drivers and reported, "In just 40 minutes, we logged nearly 400 access points, and many were unsecured." The unsecured part is the important one. Access Points are detectable because they need to be available to authorized users. Finding an Access Point isn't the problem, the concern here is finding an unprotected AP that allows unauthorized users to 'hop on' to the internal network.
So should you care? In a word, yup. But not just about the WWWD, about war driving and the security of your Access Points in general. In fact, try war driving against your own wireless network. If you can get into your network via an unsecured AP so can an attacker. So do your own driving, or the foot based equivalent- 'war walking', i.d. your available Access Points and lock them down. There are a number of ways to prevent unwanted access- such as MAC ACLs and 802.1x/EAP authentication. Take precautionary measures so that when the war drivers come around although they may be able to find your access point, they won't be able to get on it.
Posted by Diana at July 3, 2003 08:17 AM