War Driving :: essays research papers

War driving to Disney World Summer of 2004War driving involves roaming around a neighborhood see to iting for the increasingly numerous hot vagabond where high-speed Internets access is free. What I found interesting was that the hacks were pretty basic and that most of the information on how to break into neglect systems, how to look for Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) being enabled and other receiving set steps could be found in a Google search.My brother Carlos a full quantify computer geek and I had decided at the beginning of the summer that we were taking the family to Disney but I wasnt going to take any downtime or a vacation per se. Instead, I would validate through war driving around an area with a laptop computer and an 802.11 network card to target the presence of wireless networks. Let me preface, my brothers experience with wireless networks. He embraces new technologies and tries to understand how to make the workplace safe with security controls. My brusque bro ther has actually taught me every thing I know about IT.Packing my car with the necessary gear and my brothers Dell Inspiron laptop, a newly purchased Orinoco wireless network card, lots of CDs and my wireless 2-GHz antenna we started the trip to Disney. We got on the turnpike and I was hoping for some peace and quiet from our kids but I should have know better, kids will be kids. While on this mission, it was critical for us to identify if the following could be picked up from the war drive. Think about it. Youre glide the Net at home or in the office, and someone just hops onto your network connection. With information about whether or non WEP is disabled and SSID default settings, an unauthorized user could access your documents, financials or other sensitive information.The WEP encryption method was designed to provide wireless networks with the same security available in wired networks however, there are some challenges with this standard .The presence of the service set iden tifier (SSID), the name assigned to a wireless network. Usually, the SSID comes by default victimization the vendors name and should be changed to something nondescript .With these two pieces of information, an unauthorized user could be able to acquire access to a wireless network. Upon our commencement ceremony rest stop we exited near little town that was almost unpopulated .We knew that most likely nothing was going to pop- up on the screen not even a those annoying advertising pop- ups .