'War driving' is a WiFi sub-culture where individuals or groups literally drive around neighbourhoods or built-up surburban areas in search of WiFi networks to exploit. Unsecured or WiFi networks with vulnerabilities are quickly accessed and explored*. Some war drivers are simply mischievious whilst others are outright intrusive. Some even go to the extreme of arming themselves to the teeth. Check out this war driving kitted van at eBay:
"The van, a custom job with a $1,200 alarm system, $1,200 sound system, GPS, police scanner, 160 watt power inverter and a homemade WiFi dish, was designed for one thing: driving around looking for WiFi service that you can snarf."
Whether you plan on getting a super war driving van or not, here's a tool that will help you on your next war driving adventure. Most of us 'war walk' anyway..."iStumbler says Hello to Bonjour! Apple's new name for the combination of multicast DNS and DNS Service Discovery which allows you to browse all the Bonjour enabled hosts on your network and connect to advertised services such as web servers or iTunes libraries. The GPS Plugin is substantially updated adding the ability to put down virtual pins and record the location of Notes and AirPort Networks, it also fixes a hanging bug for people with Bluetooth phones, Infared Ports and other serial devices. New icons throughout make Release 93 the best looking version of iStumbler yet." - iStumbler Developer
Previous releases of iStumbler pale in comparison to this latest release that has rendevouz and Bluetooth support that works. With its easy to use interface(Diagram 1.0) and small footprint, its fast becoming an essential WiFi tool.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot. The best bit... "its free!" Download you copy at the iStumbler site.
Having said all of that, if you are running a WiFi network its best to secure it and NEVER leave it at its default settings. Most manufacturers of WiFi equipment ship their hardware with generic admin userIDs and password so leaving your WiFi equipment at its factory settings is just inviting trouble. If you're unsure how to accomplish this, feel free to refer to our past articles to learn how to secure your WiFi network.
* Accessing WiFi networks without authorisation is a criminal offence is certain countries. War drive at your own risk.