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Wireless Networking Hardware

Wi-Fi in the Sky 148

Posted by michael from the new-heights dept.
mindless4210 writes "In an attempt to have the greatest warflying run to date, members from Daily Wireless, Tom's Hardware, SoCalWUG, and Highlands Highspeed teamed up for an amazing two-plane mission around Southern California. They picked up over 3000 access points and 900 clients, established a point to point link between the two planes, and successfully video conferenced in real time over the connection. This is also the first time that the wireless network detection tool Kismet has been taken up in the air, reporting over twice as many APs as NetStumbler. There is some footage of the flight in divx format available here."
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Wi-Fi in the Sky More

Wi-Fi in the Sky

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  • How much info? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by GaussianInteger ( 772028 ) on Saturday May 01, 2004 @10:32PM (#9031736)
    How much information can they REALLY gather from flying overhead? I assume that those planes travel as speeds > 85mph. Given the range of most APs, and the altitude of the plane, wouldn't they only be in range for a couple of seconds?

    • Re:How much info? (Score:1, Informative)

      by necro2607 ( 771790 )
      A couple seconds is all you need.. hell, even a split second is long enough to capture many packets of data.

      I've heard many times of people wardriving on the freeway, so speed isn't really the issue...

      I'd consider the altitude a significant issue, although the radio waves would travel pretty far with almost no interference whatsoever through completely open air...

    • Re:How much info? (Score:2, Informative)

      by T0t0r0_fan ( 658111 )
      I think they only gather a couple of packets, then figure out some basic info from them(AP model, WEP-encrypted or not, etc). And those are sent out a couple of times per second, aren't they? So I don't think high speed is much of an issue, either. Gotta RTFA now, though :)

      • Re:How much info? - Plenty (Score:5, Informative)

        by necro2607 ( 771790 ) on Saturday May 01, 2004 @10:45PM (#9031796)
        To quote the book "Maximum Wireless Security" from Sams Publishing:

        Many Access Points have the ability to be configured in a stealth mode, thus "disabling the beacon" as one of their options. In reality, the beacon frame is still sent every 100 milliseconds--only the SSID has been removed.

        Information made available by a single beacon frame, one of which is sent 10 times a second:

        • Basic Service Set ID (BSSID)
        • WEP-enabled or not
        • Type of device: AP or peer
        • MAC address of wireless device
        • Channel device was heard on
        • Signal strength of device
        • Longitude and latitude (if using a GPS)

    • Re:How much info? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by transient ( 232842 ) on Saturday May 01, 2004 @10:49PM (#9031815)
      You can slow a 172 down to about 60 MPH if you're careful. Dunno about the Piper though.

      • Re:How much info? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Texas Rose on Lava L ( 712928 ) on Saturday May 01, 2004 @11:52PM (#9031998) Homepage Journal
        Actually, if it's a windy enough day, you can get your ground speed down to zero MPH. Just fly 60mph into a 60mph headwind. For that matter, if it's a really windy day, you can fly backwards.

        • Re:How much info? (Score:1, Informative)

          by Wyatt Earp ( 1029 )
          Yep.

          Airspeed is mesured two ways.
          Indicated Airspeed and True Airspeed. True takes into account the wind, if you have a tailwind you can be going faster than the aircraft is possible of flying, like when the B-29s discovered the Jet Stream over the Pacific and would end up going 450-500 MPH when the aircraft was only possible of doing around 290 under it's own power.

          http://www.fact-index.com/a/ai/airspeed_indicato r. html
          • True takes into account the wind, if you have a tailwind you can be going faster than the aircraft is possible of flying, like when the B-29s discovered the Jet Stream over the Pacific and would end up going 450-500 MPH when the aircraft was only possible of doing around 290 under it's own power.

            And on the return trip they could be going slower than the aircraft was actually capable of flying...

          • Re:How much info? (Score:5, Informative)

            by transient ( 232842 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @01:07AM (#9032175)
            True airspeed most certainly does not take wind into account. You're thinking of ground speed. True airspeed is calibrated airspeed corrected for altitude and non-standard temperature.

    • Nevermind that... (Score:5, Funny)

      by uberdave ( 526529 ) on Saturday May 01, 2004 @11:40PM (#9031965) Homepage
      Nevermind how much info they can gather, but rather, how are they going to mark the sidewalk?

    • Just one more reason... (Score:4, Funny)

      by vwjeff ( 709903 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @12:01AM (#9032019)
      to put an anti-aircraft defense system on my roof.
    • At microwave frequencies, line of sight is more important than distance. WiFi runs at the same frequency as your microwave oven.

      Once you get above all the absorbing clutter on the ground, range is probably impressive.

      For an example of what's possible, consider the people who've called 911 from cellphones on mountains dozens of miles from the nearest cell tower. They were a long way off but were high enough to have a clear line to the cell site.

  • Wi-Fi in the Sky... (Score:5, Funny)

    by UniverseIsADoughnut ( 170909 ) on Saturday May 01, 2004 @10:33PM (#9031744)
    ... With Dimonds?
  • Remember to lock down wifi network ASAP

  • Roadtrip soon, which GPS? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jon Howard ( 247978 ) on Saturday May 01, 2004 @10:36PM (#9031759) Journal
    I'm going to go on a roadtrip from the East Bay heading north. My friends will be taking a second car, and we've already decided to set up a link between us for the trip (can you say deathmatch?) - but I need to pick up a pair of GPS units on the cheap. Does anyone have a recommendation for a cheap, gpsd compatible unit?

    • Re:Roadtrip soon, which GPS? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by PatJensen ( 170806 ) on Saturday May 01, 2004 @10:45PM (#9031793) Homepage
      Jon, Units just need to support the open GPS NMEA protocol. USB is preferred because it can be powered by your laptop without a bulky adapter or take a lighter port. I'd recommend some of the GPS "mouse" devices that are imported from Japanese manufacturers and are on eBay for $60-$80. No display but they are great for navigating with Streets and Trips or Netstumbler, etc. They will probe as a standard serial device at 9600 baud which you can feed to your navigation software. I'm in the East Bay about every 2 weeks and I frequently run kismet there quite successfully. Using an external antenna helps a lot too! Pat
      • Thanks for the info, I appreciate it.
      • A cheaper solution, if you can find it, would be the digitraveler from Radioshack. It is a clearance item and thus will be more difficult to find (there's 2 available at a store near me though, think sticks). But, if you are so lucky as to find one, it'd be only $30. There are two models, one for PC, with a db9 on it, and another for PDA's, which has 3 connectors, palm, journada, and ipaq. The other end of all these connectors is RJ12 which plugs into the GPS unit. If you're cheap, like me, you can bu
    • A decent cheapie is the Deluo:

      Deluo [deluo.com]

      An excellent solid unit for permanent mounting is the Garmin GPS-16. Its got WAAS, 1pps output, and has worked great on several projects I've done.

  • Warning...! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 01, 2004 @10:38PM (#9031767)
    Our access point is protected with the Patriot Missle Defense System. Offenders are liable to be shot down.

    Your Friend,

    D. McBride.

  • Don't bother with the video dl... (Score:4, Informative)

    by tvh2k ( 738947 ) on Saturday May 01, 2004 @10:38PM (#9031769)
    ...it's just of some cherokee flying around, nothing special.

  • Kismet Superiority (Score:5, Interesting)

    by WwWonka ( 545303 ) on Saturday May 01, 2004 @10:41PM (#9031776)
    This is also the first time that the wireless network detection tool Kismet has been taken up in the air, reporting over twice as many APs as NetStumbler.

    This week I realized how much better (like we needed proof) Kismet is over Netstumbler, even the newly released version

    Had to fly to our San Francisco office and do some "networking stuff". Stayed in the Hyatt on Embarcadaro, where ironically they were hosting SecureIT 2004...make sure you use ' or ''=' to login to the Hyatts wi-fi service as admin for free. ;-)

    Anywho, did some wireless sniffing with my "Cantenna" and on average picked up two to three times as many APs/Peers with Kismet than Netstumbler. Same equip on a dual booting laptop.

    • Re:Kismet Superiority (Score:5, Informative)

      by necro2607 ( 771790 ) on Saturday May 01, 2004 @10:48PM (#9031811)
      Netstumbler won't report APs which aren't broadcasting their SSID in the beacon frame, whereas Kismet will. This makes a huge difference as many users are going to choose the option to make their AP "stealth" since they think it'll keep their AP hidden from "hackers" and war-drivers and the likes.

      • Re:Kismet Superiority (Score:2, Informative)

        by Necr0maN ( 141939 )
        also, netstumbler is an active scanning tool, meaning that it needs to get associated with an accesspoint first before reporting it, so it needs to talk to the accesspoint for that, and if your card can't transmit that far it won't pick it up. Kismet works in RFmon mode, so it listens in on the airwaves and just reports what it gets from the beacon frames flying around, thus , because it doesn't have to transmit anything, having a much higher range if you use a sensitive NIC (like the cisco 350, or those 20

  • Video?! (Score:5, Funny)

    by theparanoidcynic ( 705438 ) on Saturday May 01, 2004 @10:47PM (#9031807)
    Will they ever learn? Anything but plain text fed to ./ will turn your server into a heap of molten destruction. . . . .

  • Kismet got more because (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Pranjal ( 624521 ) on Saturday May 01, 2004 @10:53PM (#9031827)

    ..the Dailywireless team had a higher powered antennas.

    So the the article is little biased when it says kismet picked up more. Sure it has the ability to catch cloaked SSID's but having a high powered antenna is definite boost towards gathering more info about access points.

    • Re:Kismet got more because (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The antennas are receiving data, not sending it. The strength (output) of their antenna is irrelevant to scan for networks, as it does not need to transmit to them. The antenna design does however, a whole hell of a lot, but not its output capabilities.
      • antenna's are there for amplifying received signals too, and as you could have read in my reply a few cm above here, netstumbler needs to send packets to the accesspoint too in order to associate, while kismet doesn't.

  • You can fly too! (Score:2, Informative)

    by netringer ( 319831 )
    As I've had in my .sig you can fly, too. The hardest part is starting. Go to your nearest airport and take the $49 demo flight.

    Be A Pilot [beapilot.com] has all of the info. Other great resouces are AOPA [aopa.org] and EAA [eaa.org].
    • As the pilot for THG... I can tell you that the $49 demo flight will be the most expensive $49 you will ever spend.

      Lessons
      Flight Bag
      Radio
      Headset
      Etc

      not5150
    • I remember when the demo flight was only five bucks. Ahhhh, the good old days. Of course I also remember that minimum wage was a buck plus change so it comes to about the same thing really. The problem with not having an overselective memory I guess.

      My own first flight in a light plane was pretty memorable. Cole Palen took me up in his Pitcairn Mailwing PA-7 from the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome. Open cockpit over the Mid-Hudson Valley. Beautiful.

      Of course they don't make intro flights like that anymore, the P

  • WEP (in)security assumptions (Score:5, Interesting)

    by David Jao ( 2759 ) * <djao@dominia.org> on Saturday May 01, 2004 @11:01PM (#9031849) Homepage
    The article incorrectly assumes that WEP enabled networks are more secure than non-WEP enabled networks. You can tell by the red/green color choices and the choice imprecations that the authors think poorly of un-WEPd networks. Unfortunately, in reality the best way to secure a wireless network is one that does not involve WEP. It is well known that WEP is insecure [mit.edu] and thus one must resort to other means in order to secure a wireless network against known attacks.

    As a starting point, the WaveSEC [wavesec.org] homepage describes a way to secure a wireless network entirely using IPsec, without relying on WEP. In addition, for a small home network you can get away with static IP addressing instead of using DHCP, and in this way you can gain all the benefits of WaveSEC security without needing any software patches (since if you look closely all the software patches are DHCP related).

    IPsec is supported in Windows 2000 and up, Linux 2.6 (natively) or 2.0 and up (with Free S/WAN patches [freeswan.org]), and FreeBSD; unfortunately I have no firsthand knowledge of MacOS support. The main drawback of IPsec is that it is a very complicated protocol and takes a lot of effort to set up. Making different systems interoperate with each other is especially challenging -- for this task, I recommend the Free S/WAN interop page [freeswan.org] which links to an eclectic pile of guides covering most of the possible combinations.

    My own home wireless network is a mix of Linux and Windows XP clients all connected via IPsec, and I have much more confidence in its security than I would otherwise have with WEP.

    • Re:WEP (in)security assumptions (Score:4, Interesting)

      by necro2607 ( 771790 ) on Saturday May 01, 2004 @11:12PM (#9031884)
      I was waiting for someone to mention this...

      The ONLY security WEP provides is merely delaying any would-be 'hacker'.

      Simply sit within the range of a wireless network with your laptop, collect enough packets with Ethereal or a similar tool, and you'll have the AP's WEP key.

      Proof of concept: WEPCrack [sourceforge.net], open source program for cracking WEP keys from tcpdump, prismdump or ethereal captures.

      For detailed info on why WEP is insecure, go here [berkeley.edu]. Plenty of info on various types of Wifi attacks and vulnerabilities.

    • Re:WEP (in)security assumptions (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      This is true; WEP is known to be insecure. However, for the average joe, it is good enough - its the whole target of oppurtunity thing - would you as a hacker, spend a night in your car outside some dudes house in the hopes that they might compplete an online transaction with a CC?
      It also prevents bandwidth leeching from all but the most determined.
      For companies etc, the solution you mention is of course the better one; they stand to lose much more to a hacker, and can afford to pay someone to set up your s
      • One thing is, though, that you can actually try dictionary or brute-force password cracking on individual packets, so you could just capture a few packets and do a dictionary or brute-force crack in the comfort of your own home, or even just leave it to your 2ghz home desktop to do the cracking while you're at work or whatever.

        You can see an explanation of this here [informit.com], with a detailed explanation of how you could potentially crack a WEP key in half a minute...

        Of course, brute-forcing a 104-bit key is going

      • Re:WEP (in)security assumptions (Score:4, Insightful)

        by David Jao ( 2759 ) <djao@dominia.org> on Saturday May 01, 2004 @11:37PM (#9031955) Homepage
        WEP is known to be insecure. However, for the average joe, it is good enough ... would you as a hacker, spend a night in your car outside some dudes house in the hopes that they might compplete an online transaction with a CC?

        I agree that for most people (and maybe even for me), WEP is good enough. However I should point out that I did actually spend a night cracking my own access point's WEP encryption and my success in that effort is what motivated me to seek a better solution.

        My bigger objection is with the article's premise that the unWEP'd networks are automatically insecure. WEP is neither necessary nor (fully) sufficient for really good security. People who really know what they're doing don't actually use WEP. The writers of this article (and many other writers) present a very simple "TURN ON WEP" message that does not adequately convey the subtleties of what is in fact a very complicated security situation.

        I don't necessarily expect a sermon in every article, but I would appreciate a more moderated message and at least some kind of acknowledgement that there is more going on behind the scenes.

      • And any credit card transactions better be using SSL anyway! I just assume people can read my otherwise unencrypted data whether I'm on a wireless connection or not.
      • At my school, in order to get internet access we have to authenticate against the school's proxy server. All the wifi access points have the same SSID (the ingenious 12345). So a few bright individuals create ad hoc wifi networks with their laptops with an SSID of 12345, then build a simple page with a prompt like the one the proxy gives and they harvest school id/password combos.

        Luckily, my own laptop(iBook) differentiates between normal and ad hoc wifi networks and prompts me before connecting to an
        • Simple, check the certificate. I'm assuming that your school is smart enough to have the proxy server doing authentication over SSL so if the page comes up unencrypted then you know you aren't talking to the schools proxy, if it prompts you to accept a new certificate I would likewise be inclined to investigate.
      • This is true; WEP is known to be insecure. However, for the average joe, it is good enough - its the whole target of oppurtunity thing - would you as a hacker, spend a night in your car outside some dudes house in the hopes that they might compplete an online transaction with a CC?

        To the average Joe the risk to household WiFi is not some blackhat hiding in a van outside the house, its the neighbourhood teens, they have weeks to gather packets and a pringles can and WiFi card don't cost that much. Oh yes

    • as W.E.P stands for "Wired Equivalence Protocol".

      It was never designed to be any more secure than copper, which we all know is secure against packet sniffers (NOT!).

      IPsec is the best and most general way to secure wireless networks.

    • In addition, for a small home network you can get away with static IP addressing instead of using DHCP,

      Or you could allow only authorized Mac addresses. There are good reasons businesses don't do this, but for small homes its brilliant, secure, and fairly straitforward.

      • Re:WEP (in)security assumptions (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Beryllium Sphere(tm) ( 193358 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @01:03AM (#9032160) Journal
        Umm, it's not hard to spoof a MAC address.
        • but to spoof a mac address you must know what a valid one is. Unless you care to try all of them. this would require acess to the router configuration. If you aren't hooked up to ethernet, this becomes rather a catch-22.

          Keep a good router config password and you shouldn't have any problems.

          • with kismet [kismetwireless.net], you will be able to see the valid mac addresses being used on the network, without being connected to it. from their homepage:

            "Kismet identifies networks by passively collecting packets and detecting standard named networks, detecting (and given time, decloaking) hidden networks, and infering the presence of nonbeaconing networks via data traffic."

            then use something like macchanger [alobbs.com], and you're in!
          • In addition to the ease of sniffing and spoofing MAC addresses, there remains the problem that anybody can sniff the contents of your wireless packets even if they aren't connected to your access point. MAC address checks can block attackers from connecting, but they won't block attackers from sniffing.

            IPsec performs host authentication as well as data encryption, both using strong cryptography. Done properly it can solve both problems at once.

    • while i will agree that wep is less secure, i found these comments [oreillynet.com] to be very interesting. if you are up to date on firmware patches, wep might be enough for you.

      if you are trying to protect missile launch codes, i might look elsewhere, but for day-to-day crap...
  • Anyone else find it amusing that there are over 3 times as many APs as there are clients. I guess the clients wouldn't be running all the time though so maybe it was bad timing.

  • I'm still amazed... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by LqqkOut ( 767022 ) on Saturday May 01, 2004 @11:05PM (#9031863) Journal
    I'm still amazed at the number of unsecured WAP's! Who are these people!?

    Wait, nevermind! All of the unsecured AP's must just be Mom & Pop coffee shops offering free nodes. Right, must be it.

    While sitting at my coffee table, Kismet shows 4 wireless networks available (without an external antenna) and each of these networks has WEP enabled, the message must be getting through to some people!

    I know absolutely nothing about Microsoft's WI/FI API, but imagine a virus that spreads throughout the mess (er, mesh) created by the unsecured wireless networks. Hmm... and if the virus is smart enough to determine the WAP's manufacturer, it could even use the default admin password to blow massive holes in the router's firewall as well. While it's not very likely in my geographic location, it could definately be feasible in more densely populated areas.

    Oh, and kudos to Kismet for blowing NetStumbler out of the water!

  • Too Bad DailyWireless.com is a STOLEN Domain (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    dailywireless.org is the real daily wireless, after they had sucess in gaining ad $$ dailywireless.com snagged the .com name and wont release it, dailywireless cant afford to persue the issue because now its ad dollars are being stolen

  • Mirror of movie (Score:5, Informative)

    by paulproteus ( 112149 ) <slashdot@a[ ]esh.org ['she' in gap]> on Saturday May 01, 2004 @11:14PM (#9031888) Homepage
    I have made a mirror of the movie [jhu.edu] so you can spare Tom's the bandwidth.
  • That's a pretty pointless video clip.

  • A few months ago I did this over San Francisco (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ConsumedByTV ( 243497 ) on Saturday May 01, 2004 @11:28PM (#9031934) Homepage
    It was a single plane flying over the San Francisco bay area. I used Kismet as well... I think I wasn't the first but I did beat these guys by a long shot.

    Two photos here:

    kismet photo [yak.net], San Francisco [yak.net].

    We had an ibook scanning as well, it picked up about 1/10th of the networks. All in all without very good equipment (knoppix, old kismet, nothing special) we got about 190 networks.

    It's possible with a good antenna to circle and get online, it's also possible to make cell phone calls if you should feel like it (not that we did that). We were flying at about 2000 feet for most of the time.

    It wasn't the last time we did it either. War flying can be fun with a GPS that records the altitude as well as the lat+long.

  • Dumb idea (Score:4, Insightful)

    by johnthorensen ( 539527 ) on Saturday May 01, 2004 @11:46PM (#9031981)
    OK, well here's a list of things I see wrong with this article:
    • Using uncertified transmitters in a GA aircraft
    • Unexperienced pilots flying formation
    • DOOR POPPING OPEN AT TAKEOFF

    As a pilot myself, I've got to say that these guys didn't exactly have their heads screwed on straight the day they went to do this. You couldn't PAY me enough to fly formation with another pilot whom I didn't know well, and someone obviously wasn't being too careful if doors are popping open. The wi-fi transmitters probably aren't that big of a deal, but I believe it may still be illegal, and I'd hate to do have all that gear running without a decent idea of what it was going to do to my avionics. Overall, a stunt like this does little to advance any sort of "science", and probably wasn't worth the risk to the 4 lives involved

    -JT

    • Re:Dumb idea (Score:5, Interesting)

      by not5150 ( 732114 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @12:15AM (#9032046)
      "Overall, a stunt like this does little to advance any sort of "science", and probably wasn't worth the risk to the 4 lives involved"

      Hmmm.... Wasn't this said to the Wright Brothers?? Of course, we all know what failures they turned into /sarcasm off.

      Doors pop open all the time. During flight training, flight instructors tell students what to do in the case that a door pops open. It's actually not a big deal, if you have the proper training. The air pressure keeps the door almost closed.

      Inexperienced pilots flying formation?? Do you know what kind of formation we were flying? Did you know that both pilots have hundreds of hours? The pilot of the Cherokee has a private airstrip with 5 planes and a helicopter.

      The closest we ever got to each other was about 100 feet. Most of the time we were at least 300 feet away.

      As far as the wifi messing with the avionics. Yeah there is a chance... but I did a previous warfly in December, 2003. We didn't experience any problems. Also, it doesn't really matter if the wifi messes with avionics, as we flew VFR. We followed visual landmarks, and used a moving map GPS.

      Accidents happen... you can't stop that. People get hurt/killed in the name of science every day. Some people take the risks, other people just talk about them.

      not5150
      • I would like to say that un-like the other two
        post I think that was freaking awsome and can't wait to get my commercial fixed wing liscence and do the same thing.

        Anyone that post about the avaonics messing with equipment or "flying in formation" as being dangerous has not idea what they are talking about, and have probably never be in an Airplane besides a huge jet.

        Flying in formation dosen't mean you have to fly 3-4 feet like the fucking blue angles. You can fly 100's of feet from each other as long as y

    • Re:Dumb idea (Score:3, Interesting)

      by kfg ( 145172 )
      . . .probably wasn't worth the risk to the 4 lives involved

      Personally I'd say making this assessment is strictly the business of the 4 lives. If someone wants to attempt a free climb of the north face of the Eiger it really makes no nevermind to me.

      Risks to others are another story.

      Of course, you risk other people's lives every time you take a drive to the mall as well, in tight formation with God knows who doing God knows what. There's no clean ethical cutoff.

      Of course, on a typical day cars don't jus

    • Re:Dumb idea (Score:4, Informative)

      by tyler_larson ( 558763 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @03:03AM (#9032485) Homepage
      * Using uncertified transmitters in a GA aircraft

      What the hell is that supposed to mean? Even on a commercial scheduled flight, any electronic device at all that the pilot and/or carrier deems safe is allowed--and that's under IFR. For GA craft under VFR, there's nothing even remotely illegal or even discouraged about it. There's obviously nothing dangerous about it. Steam gauges, visual navigation. You could lose your whole electrical system in those conditions and still continue the flight safely and legally as planned (albeit not in LAX's airspace) The 2.5 GHz transmitters aren't going to interfere with the com radios, though--you could test that on the ground. Hardly the stuff that would put lives in danger. Did you read your FAR/AIM manual before you took your written test? I did. Yep, the whole damn thing. And let me tell you, there's nothing illegal about what they did.

      * Unexperienced pilots flying formation

      That would be dangerous if they were inexperienced. But how did you arrive at that conclusion? Certainly not by checking the FAA registry -- At least one of the two is an instructor.

      * DOOR POPPING OPEN AT TAKEOFF

      A bit out of the ordinary, sure, but certainly not the stuff of disaster. The Cessna is, after all, a 1973. Perhaps the door latch needs work. Still, an open door has never caused an accident on an unpressurized aircraft. Never? Never. Not even one. Sometimes the pilot forgets to fly the plane when he sees that the door is open. But that's just training.

      No, I don't see anything inherently dangerous about the operations they were conducting. Actually, I think you just came up with a few objections to their procedures to find an excuse to let the slashdot world know that you're a pilot.

      In fact, I was thinking it would be fun to do in my area, if I can get someone to man the laptop. :)

  • Did they post a list of the WAPs they found anywhere? They flew right over my place and I want to know if they saw mine!

  • Been there, done that (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jmoore2333 ( 592784 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @12:06AM (#9032030)
    I've personally taken my Powerbook 17' w/ integrated 802.11g up in a friend of mine's plane (Grumman American) and was able using kismac for 10.3 (OS X) to pick up some faint wireless base stations, nothing strong enough to actually forge a connection. We had to be flying reasonably slow, and low but it did work. I also had a 802.11 connection going to another laptop, but it was in the co-pilot's seat.
    • Didn't know KisMac existed. I'm not very interested in Wardriving, but still like running MacStumbler. I googled, and here's a link if anyone wants it: KisMac. [versiontracker.com]

      Oh, and are the antennas on Apple laptops powerful enough for any serious Wardriving? I can barely pick up a network outside the house with my iBook...

  • And...... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Nursie ( 632944 )
    So there are a lot of WAP's open and unsecured. Big deal. Mine at home is open, by choice. I like the idea. If everyone had open WLAN's attached to ADSL/Similar, then I could go pretty much anywhere and access the net on my laptop. I would return the favour by paying fo a connection that other people could use in the same way. I like that world in my imagination where everyone allows access and so everyone has access. If it gets abused for spam I'll lock it down, yes I am a realist in a small way. Attack
    • Sounds like a really dumb thing to do, considering that you have probably signed a contract with your ISP saying that you are personally responsible for anything that comes out of that IP. Your choice though...
  • I'm not terribly familiar with Wi-Fi yet, but won't ubiquitous, anonymous, free Internet access lead to more problems with trolls, harassment, and other forms of web and email garbage? I know Wi-Fi can be locked down, e.g. my university requires that you register your NIC with the campus before obtaining access. But don't all these war driving/flying expeditions show that many if not most Wi-Fi is not yet secure?

  • oddly enough (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Keruo ( 771880 )
    I did some research while ago, wether warwalking/wardriving is legal here in Finland. Surprisingly I found section from the radio law that states receiving transmissions that weren't intended to you directly are illegal to receive. Meaning if you don't own the accesspoint or have legal access to it, you can be sentenced with this law, and the sentence goes up to 2 years in prison. That makes warwalking pretty extreme sports if there's someone who wants to try if this law holds in court.
  • In the conclusions of the article they state that: "If standard, off-the-shelf wireless hardware is capable of performing these same tasks and why is it so expensive?"

    -Probably because they didnt achieve air-to-ground communication. They only achieved communication between two objects moving in parallel at the same speed, which is equal to communication between two stationary objects. RF communication standards are made to operate up to a certain speed, which range from "walking" (for Bluetooth) to "hig
  • Hope these guys submitted to WiGLE [wigle.net]. Enough of this kind of thing and we'll have to actually use the altitude data :)

    A friend and I have the same 1 watt amp, nearly the same antennas, he runs NetStumbler and I run Kismet. I routinely get 30-50% more networks in tandem social-stumbling (which is a lot of fun, btw, and it helps to have a navigator for doing targeted drives).

    We haven't done one since NetStumbler 0.4 came out, however, which is more active in its searching. Initial reports indicate that it d

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