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Stumbling into kismet...
Sep. 5th, 2003 06:28 amKismet is an 802.11b wireless network sniffer application that identifies different wireless networks and does so on the fly if running on a portable computer, as I found out by having the program running while driving home yesterday.
Actually, what happened was that I forgot to turn off my Zaurus, so I was a little surprised when the ringing alarm went off with a vengeance as I pulled into a parking space near a Mexican restaurant on NASA Road One and I-45. Out of curiosity, I took the unit with me as I walked over to an Office Depot, which allowed two more wireless networks to be identified. Once finished there, I drove up the service road to Bay Area Boulevard, where three access points with the same SSID showed up in short order on the Z (very strange, as the I was in a traffic clover-leaf when the alarm went off, at which time the closest building must have been at least 200 yards away).
By the time the battery drained itself (probably less than 30 min), I'd found 13 wireless networks. Of these, just over half were encrypted using Wep. I didn't do anything else, such as try to gain access to the networks that were unencrypted.
The experience was something of an eye-opener.
Cheers...
UPDATE: I had kismet running as I drove home after my shift, from the intersection of Saturn Drive and Bay Area Blvd, to I-45. Something like 20 networks, and a couple of them are running routers that appear to be in the default, out-of-the-box configuration. That shouldn't surprise me, actually. I suspect lots of folks are not really aware of the doors they're opening when they place that wireless access point on their network.
Actually, what happened was that I forgot to turn off my Zaurus, so I was a little surprised when the ringing alarm went off with a vengeance as I pulled into a parking space near a Mexican restaurant on NASA Road One and I-45. Out of curiosity, I took the unit with me as I walked over to an Office Depot, which allowed two more wireless networks to be identified. Once finished there, I drove up the service road to Bay Area Boulevard, where three access points with the same SSID showed up in short order on the Z (very strange, as the I was in a traffic clover-leaf when the alarm went off, at which time the closest building must have been at least 200 yards away).
By the time the battery drained itself (probably less than 30 min), I'd found 13 wireless networks. Of these, just over half were encrypted using Wep. I didn't do anything else, such as try to gain access to the networks that were unencrypted.
The experience was something of an eye-opener.
Cheers...
UPDATE: I had kismet running as I drove home after my shift, from the intersection of Saturn Drive and Bay Area Blvd, to I-45. Something like 20 networks, and a couple of them are running routers that appear to be in the default, out-of-the-box configuration. That shouldn't surprise me, actually. I suspect lots of folks are not really aware of the doors they're opening when they place that wireless access point on their network.
