War Driving is a technique used to sniff out 802.11 data transmissions with the use of a wireless card. This technique is a spin off of War Dialing, which is a similar technique to obtain access to a network by calling phone lines and recording lines that are modem lines. Some of the software used in War Driving is sophisticated enough to produce outputs such as SSID's, MAC address of the device, channel, and signal strength.
What is Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP)? When did WEP become part of the 802.3 Standard? When was it deprecated?
Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), is one type of an encryption method that is used among wireless networks. Due to weaknesses and flaws associated with WEP, there have been newer 802.11 encryption methods such as WPA and WPA2 that have since addressed some of the security weaknesses of WEP. Some legacy devices are not capable of utilizing newer forms of encryption such as WPA , however according to Berghel, “The only thing worse than enabling WEP is not enabling WEP!”1 Even though WEP is not, what the Information Security community would consider an adequate method of securing a wireless networks, having some sort of encryption is better than none at all. The 802.3 standard refers to a wired network. WEP is an encryption method used in 802.11 wireless networks. In 2004, the 802.11i standard was ratified which offered WPA2 and WEP encryption was deprecated by the computing community.
The lesson to be learned from War Driving is if we are using a wireless network with no encryption or WEP encryption, the network and devices on it are likely to become compromised. The technology exists so that with some easy to find open source software, one can obtain access to just about any low or non encrypted network with little effort. We need to be aware that the wireless technology we are utilizing uses radio frequencies to transmit the packets, and like a scanner listens to wireless home phone house calls, people with the right type of scanners (software) can also intercept your data transmissions.
Hal Berghel, “Wireless Infidelity I: War Driving”, Communications of the ACM Vol. 47, No. 9, (September 2004): p.24
