Wireless and Mobile Device Security, 2nd Edition

Wardriving

Wardriving is the 802.11 wireless equivalent of wardialing, in which phreakers would search banks of telephone numbers looking for a modem to answer. In this way, they found computer systems that were connected to external resources by modems. Now, wardriving attackers search for wireless access points (WAPs) in a form of unauthorized and covert reconnaissance.

Wardriving doesn’t require special equipment, although it is typically more successful if a high-gain antenna is used. Usually, the wardriver uses a WLAN utility called a sniffer to detect access points and their SSIDs by intercepting and capturing their beacons. Examples of sniffers include Kismet and Airshark, as well as the older but still popular NetStumbler. Wardrivers ...