Wardriving is actually pretty simple, and with modern technology and its lethal to those who don't know the difference between open, WEP, and WPA2 encryption on their network. Let me explain via a little tale, might be easier to grasp the concept before I get technical. We're going to use Wigle for android, as our tool of the trade.
You're on your way home from work and need to find your nearest WiFi because you are dangerously close to using up all of your data on your data plan, your wife asked you to make reservations for valentines day and you remembered on your drive home. What do you do? Turn on Wigle, enable your GPS location, and start driving. As you drive Wigle will begin to notice WiFi and place a little tick in the map based on your GPS location with what the SSID is, if its WPA, if its WEP, or if its opened. Out of nowhere the Peterson house WiFi is open, go ahead stop, log in, make that reservation to save your day, and head back on your way.
Yep its that easy, a map location of EVERYTHING around you. Transmitting printers, transmitting cell phones, transmitting access points, EVERYTHING!!! Want to talk about something that is super easy and super scary at the same time? This thing is it.
Its scary because so much information is available for free, from people who don't even know it. Open networks are horrible, and people use them all the time. I've been to friends and restaurants who say "we don't use passwords and leave our network unlocked, its easier that way and less confusing for us in the long run. If someone wants to use it, we don't care."
Who do you think is going to use it? You average every day Bob or Tim going for a morning stroll isn't the person you need to worry about, its people who have the same skills as me that you need to worry about. The person who sees that on 2nd street has open WiFi at a Cafe and no security functions enabled, so when you go to use your mobile banking on your smart phone, I can grab that data in a second.
In terms of security open is horrible, and in terms of horrible, WEP isn't much better. Now for the problems with WEP and other security flaws that Wardriving brings shows, this will all have to wait for another post. As I said before, I'm not long winded, I'll give you the tid bits up front, and the whole meal later.
Until next time my goblins, be safe.
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