Hacker Culture A to Z

Chapter 23. W

Wardialing

See “Wardriving”

Wardriving

Wardriving and wardialing are great examples of cool-sounding hacking terminology. Both are derived from the 1983 film WarGames. Wardialing is a kind of phreaking activity where you use an automatic dialer to mass-call as many phone numbers as possible that have the same area code and exchange (for instance, one could wardial all the numbers that start with 416-555). If computers with modems are connected to any of those numbers, the hacking program tries to connect to them.

Wardriving is when you travel around an area with a WiFi-capable device like a smartphone or laptop in your car, looking for publicly accessible, unencrypted WiFi networks. If a wardriver had malicious intentions, they could cyber exploit the wireless access point and any devices that were connected to it. Whereas a pentester who wardrives would report the unencrypted WiFi and what it may entail as a possible security vulnerability. (Despite the name, pedestrians can wardrive, too!) I once met a hacker who put a great big antenna on the roof of his van so he could wardrive around the city.

See also “Penetration testing”, “Phreaking”,“WarGames (1983 film)”

WarGames (1983 film)

“Shall we play a game?”

WarGames is perhaps the first proper Hollywood movie about computer hackers. In it, Matthew Broderick plays David Lightman, a teenage hacker with a PC who connects to networks to look for games to play. One day, he connects to the Pentagon’s computer system ...