It is important that businesses of all sizes as well as corporate telecommuters, work from home personal, the home office and home networks alike implement both preventative and proactive measures to negate or at the very least to reduce exposure to the potentially disastrous negative effects and fiscal risks posed by war driving and wireless network hacking.
War Driving Versus Wireless Network Hacking
While; most of us have heard of hacking, the more recent practice of “war driving” is not so well known.
War Driving
War driving is the practice of cruising around with a wireless enabled laptop complete with a plethora of wireless networking detection and cracking tools. Many war drivers even make use of GPS to physically locate with pin-point accuracy the precise locations of any wireless networks detected.
The major distinction between war driving and hacking into wireless networks is that in the strictest sense war driving is all about discovering the existence of wireless networks.
Wireless Network Hacking
Hacking wireless networks on the other hand is about cracking/breaking into the wireless networks discovered through war driving or any other means for that matter. In short, the hacking of wireless networks is all about gaining access to a network whilst not being a legitimate bone fide network user with authentic access privileges and rights. This does not infer in any way that a would-be intruder/hacker is implicitly malevolent.
War Driving and Wireless Network Hacking Tools
Both war driving and wireless network hacking tend to use the same range of tools as each other. Candidates include specialty wireless packet sniffing tools (Airsnort, Kismet, NetStumbler and Wireshark etc).
The sorry reality is that for tools such as Kismet there really is very little you can do to prevent them from discovering the presence of your wireless network. Fortunately however; there are countermeasures such as fully encrypted transmissions, tunneling and heightened authentication procedures, which you can employ to deny the potential malevolent intruders from progressing beyond the discovery phase.
Legitimate Ethical Wireless Network Hacking
There are many reasons that one may attempt to hack one's own wireless networks. For example; legitimate authorized and authenticated security staff may be conducting site surveys, penetration testing or network security preparedness assessments and will usually harbor no truly malevolent or other “evil” intentions.
I say usually because many security breaches do involve breaches of trust by authentic personal. Subversion from within is an issue that has existed since long before wireless networking capabilities were developed. Then there is that group who may be attempting to access/hack into your wireless network for the thrill of it simply because it's there.
War Driving and Wireless Network Hacking Tools
Note that the standard tools used for war driving and wireless hacking purposes are generally the same. They are also the very same tools that authentic network security personal will use to conduct site surveys and penetration testing etc.
Downloadable Self-Extracting and Automatic Installer Packages
In addition, the vast majority of these wireless network tools are freely available for download via the Internet. In general; you will find that the vast majority of these tools will come in the form of self extracting installation packages and/or user installable software.
Here are a few free for private use wireless networking, survey, network discovery, packet sniffing, site assessment and penetration testing tools currently available: Airsnort, ASLeap, CowPatty, Ethereal, Kismet, NetStumbler and Wireshark
Sophisticated Yet User Friendly
What many may not realize is the degree of user friendly sophistication and capabilities that these tools have attained over the years of their existence and development.
Armed by Default
So it is that in today's wireless networking climate we must assume; that by default, attackers will also be armed with these tools. Bearing this in mind, we will construct our defenses in a manner best suited to counteracting a multiplicity of threats originating from all angles.
War Driving Protective Countermeasures
Countermeasures to protect your wireless network from war driving and hackers in general must be well planned and rigorously maintained and update. Vigilance is the key.
Transmission Medium Access
First line of defense in overcoming the threats posed by war driving and wireless network hacking is achieved by reducing a transmission medium's exposure to potential threats.
Network Surveys
Site surveys need to be conducted to identify signal leakage and rogue Wireless Access Points (WAPs). This can be easily accomplished without high-tech gadgets. Simply walk around the various network zones, zone perimeters and site perimeters with a wireless enabled laptop to see what signals it can detect. You should be doing this in very much the same way using the same wireless detection and hacking tools that a war driver or any potential hacker would.
Wireless Network Physical Security
