Wardriving- Wireless LAN Hacking

Wireless networking is the most popular and fast growing technology, from home networking to the enterprise networking, wireless network now become a way of life and way of networking. As more wireless network are deployed, the need to secure them increase. 

 

This article will discuss about mapping a wireless network and exploit it.

Wardriving also known as access point mapping, is a act for searching, locating and possibly exploit the Wireless LAN while driving on a vehicle.

Requirement

The requirement for effective wardriving is based on both hardware and software.

 Hardware:  

• Portable Computer (Laptop and Netbook etc.) or PDA (Personal digital assistance) 
• A Wireless NIC card
• An Antenna 
• A handheld GPS unit (Optional)
• GPS data Cable (Optional) 
• A pigtail to connect NIC to external antenna

Software: 

• A software program for wardriving is freely available on Internet.
• NetStumbler or inSSIDer for Windows
• Kismet for Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFly BSD 

This is not enough there is need to discuss on how to choose wireless NIC and antenna for wardriving. The IEEE 802.11 is a family of standards, each one defining and specifying parts of the standard.

• 802.11b, using the 2.4 GHz radio spectrum and 11 Mbps max data rate.
• 802.11a, using the 5 GHz radio spectrum and 54 Mbps max data rate. 
• 802.11g, using the 2.4 GHz radio spectrum and 54 Mbps max data rate.

802.11b cards are the most easiest to install and it supported by most wardriving tools (software's).

A typical Laptop wardriving set up

This is not the end actually it is going to be a series article and for windows based tool netstumbler click here to learn with video tutorial. Linux version will coming soon.

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