What is wardriving? It is the act of discovering networks while driving (or moving).

This has been something I have found entertaining. It requires knowledge across several specialties of computing, such as wireless technology, GPS, operating systems, and even web development.

I have put together an almost fully automated system. The only part that hasn’t been fully automated is the loading of the data (maybe one day I will get to this).

The following is the setup I use:

Linksys WRT54GS router with DD-WRT loaded. Kismet is running in server mode off the router. I modified the router to add a GPS unit to the serial port and an antenna adapter.  I added a second WRT54G router which has limited memory, but can run DD-WRT  and is configured as a Kismet drone.  The drone plugs into the WRT54GS “server” and the server collects the drone’s data.  A 5dbi omni antenna is plugged into the server and a 14-15dbi (I would estimate) cantenna I built is plugged into the drone. This setup boots in 20 seconds and is logging networks shortly afterwards.  The GPS unit not only provides location information, it also sets the server’s clock.  Data is stored to a USB thumb drive.

For those getting started, a notebook with a WiFi card will do just fine. For Windows, use Netstumbler and for Linux or Mac, Kismet is recommended.

What do I do with this data? There isn’t anything too exciting other than see who has locked down their network and who hasn’t. It is fun to see where the networks are located (roughly). The data gets posted to wigle.net (check the stats and look for AstroTeg). They keep a map of all the wireless networks that have been found so far (is yours logged?).

The data can also be mashed up with Google Maps or Google Earth. Here’s a list of my drives.  Here is also my network stats.

Here is data I’ve collected: