Mapping Hacks

Map Nearby Wi-Fi Hotspots #17

Chapter 2, Mapping Your Neighborhood

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HACK

Collecting Data with NetStumbler

The most popular wardriving package for Windows is called NetStumbler, and

it’s available from http://www.netstumbler.com/. This package supports several

different wireless cards, GPS logging, and a few extra features, and it’s what I

use when wardriving. On Linux and BSD, you can use Kismet, available from

http://www.kismetwireless.net/, which has features similar to NetStumbler’s—

but you will also need to run gpsd

[Hack #57]. On the Mac, try MacStumbler

(http://www.macstumbler.com/) or KisMAC (http://binaervarianz.de/projekte/

programmieren/kismac/).

Unfortunately, getting wardriving software to work with dif-

ferent kinds of wireless hardware can be quite a challenge

sometimes, and the details are beyond the scope of this

book. For more information on getting your wireless net-

work detection software working, take a look at Wireless

Hacks (O’Reilly).

WiFiMaps.com parses most of the native wardriving log formats. NetS-

tumbler will export to WiScan format, a text-based format, or its own

binary .ns1 format. Regardless of which format you save your scans in,

you’ll want to upload them to WiFiMaps.com.

Uploading Your NetStumbler Logs

After your wardrive, take your resulting files and upload them to http://

WiFiMaps.com/ by selecting the “upload” link at the top of the main page.

You can create ...