Locate Any WiFi Router By Its MAC Address 204
coderrr writes "SkyHook Wireless has been wardriving the US for years creating a huge database mapping wireless routers' MAC addresses to their physical locations. They provide an minimally documented API (docs here) which allows anyone to query the database directly for any MAC address. This could potentially allow some malicious individual to find out exactly where you live. Of course for them to get the MAC of your router in most cases will require either being infected with malware or some sort of social engineering attack... Imagine if you got a phishing email that included your home address."
Security (Score:5, Funny)
This is exactly why it's a *good* idea to steal internet access from the neighbors.
Re:Security (Score:5, Insightful)
My niece asked me this, should she jump on someone elses WiFi, but this happened right after the big kerfuffle about the DNS hack.
You realize that you're giving all your data and control over to a machine that you don't control. You hope that it's open because the person is either an idiot or a good guy, but you have no evidence of either at that point. Even something as simple as checking your mail might give people access to your inbox, and all the 'password reset' notices you get.
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That's why I tunnel over OpenVPN...
Re:Security (Score:4, Informative)
You realize that you're giving all your data and control over to a machine that you don't control.
Isn't that what you already do with your own ISP? How do you know that some bored guy there isn't already eavesdropping on your data? Or even someone at your ISP's upstream provider?
Quick! (Score:5, Funny)
Someone tell San Francisco!
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why bother. they are too stupid.
Legality of this (Score:4, Insightful)
Er, isn't it illegal to wardrive in some states [Florida] in the first place?
And then putting out the MAC address publicly, like finding someone's SSN and posting it publicly. Oh, I guess its the owner's fault for not securing it.
Re:Legality of this (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless I am mistaken, securing a wireless router does not stop anyone from seeing its MAC address.
Re:Legality of this (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Legality of this (Score:4, Interesting)
I should have been more specific, by "securing" I meant encryption. As far as I know, even using WPA won't encrypt any MAC addresses.
Pulling open Network Stumbler is evidence of this, it will show all networks, with the router MAC. It will show hidden networks, just without the SSID (which can be found by other means anyway). I
Compatibility (Score:4, Informative)
Only when the person is too much of a poser to not find the hidden SSID.
Plenty of devices with an 802.11b radio, especially handheld devices, cannot connect to networks with hidden SSIDs. (A lot of them can't do WPA either.) If you use one of those devices, you have to reconfigure networks that you administer not to hide the SSID.
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Unless I am mistaken, securing a wireless router does not stop anyone from seeing its MAC address.
IIRC, some tools can show the MACs of connected clients (both wired and wireless) on the router as well. Kismet and Kismac come to mind.
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Point being, they already know "physical address:MAC address". They don't know "email address:physical address" but if they can obtain "email address:MAC address" (via social engineering or malware) they can connect the pieces and tie your e-mail address to your physical address. So they have to e-mail you asking for your MAC address (or convince you to install something that'll report back and tell them what it is).
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Comparing an SSN to a MAC? *Chuckles*
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Re:Legality of this (Score:5, Interesting)
Stop scaring the sheeple. I know it's kind of fun, but it's bad in the long term. That's how we get stupid legislation like banning wardriving or public access points/mandatory encryption.
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Stop scaring the sheeple. I know it's kind of fun, but it's bad in the long term.
The first half of the MAC identifies a manufacturer. Many manufacturers have multiple entries which in some cases may make it easy to spot a particular product.
That could lead to thieves targeting locations with premium machines (MacBook Pro etc).
I saw an online posting indicating that this was happening nearby, but heard no mention of it in the local media so I don't know if it is true. It certainly is possible.
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I'm seriously telling you that on a several network interfaces I've owned there is no unit-specific ID other than the MAC. Why would there need to be?
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What's funny is that SSNs and MACs are very similar. They are both unique identifiers. The only reason you see it as different is that SSN has been treated more like a password than a serial number.
Only they are not unique identifiers their just identifiers and they are also ridiculously easy to change (due to not being unique this is useful)
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They must be unique IDs to work correctly. And they are supposed to be assigned as unique IDs, though I agree that does not always happen. But that's like claiming that your mailing address isn't a unique ID because someone on your block mislabeled their mailbox.
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It's more like saying that your mailing address isn't a unique ID because somebody else also lives at 123 Main St... in a different postal code. The MAC only has to be unique on your local network, i.e. someone in a different "community" can have the same "address". Your IP address is what is unique, but the problem with IP addresses is that they must only be unique at a single point in time. It's a bit like trying to trace someone by their address when everyone in the community moves every few days. The MA
Re:Legality of this (Score:5, Informative)
Here's a link (with my referral code inserted): Navizon [navizon.com]
Skyhook has zero data in the city I live in, though I did eventually figure out how you could submit a MAC and coordinates to their system, and fed mine in, so at least my iPhone-owning friends will know where they are when they're at my house...
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Perfect for scaring people (Score:5, Informative)
This is perfect for when IPv6 takes off, with its built-in MAC address. Then my website can scare people shitless by greeting them with a note saying exactly where they live.
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"Welcome to my website! By the way, would you like me and my biker friends to pay you a visit at your home on Small Street? Or else, if you prefer, how about you help fill my tip jar? $50 will be fine."
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To which I'd reply, on their comments page: "I live in Paterson, NJ. Come and get me, motherfucker."
--#
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No problem, you can opt out. As long as a few thousand people do pay me each year, I don't mind a few opting out.
Just don't complain when we come to visit.
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Imagine if you got a phishing email that included your home address.
You mean like the spam that shows up in the actual mail box most days?
That stuff has my address on it, yet I still recognize it as spam. How is this any different?
Must be a web 2.0 thing.
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Also it already does this, the headers usually include a lot of information already internal (behind the firewall) IP-addresses and/or computer names, etc.
There is also spam that just resends your own emails to different people you didn't send it to before.
Those are the really scary ones.
IPv6 MAC addresses don't leak much here (Score:4, Interesting)
IPv6 does have a mode where it autoconfigures devices using a munged version of the MAC address as the lower 64 bits of the address. (It's an ugly munge, not simply a 16-bit subnet plus 48-bit MAC, but in some sense it still gives you Netware-like autoconfig.) It's not clear how many people are going to use that mode, as opposed to a DHCP-replacement mode.
But that's not going to leak information about the wireless, because typically nobody outside your building is going to talk to the IP address of the wireless side of your router. Either they're going to talk to the IPv6 address of one of your computers, so they might see the MAC address of your laptop, or they might see the MAC address of the Ethernet side of your firewall, but that's different from the MAC address of the wireless side.
Re:Perfect for scaring people (Score:5, Interesting)
You mean as though you looked up their name in the phone book?
Duh.
One of the points of IPv6 is to get rid of the kind of Internet invisibility that allows spamming and phishing to flourish. Being on the Internet will be like being in public. Privacy will be opt-in. Any community you join will have to agree to allow you to hide yourself. You will be able to hide your identity from other users on a content provider (like here on /.) but you won't be able to hide from the content provider as you DOS his account-creation system or scan his ports.
Will this create tracking-privacy issues? Sure. But we can deal with those by exercising our right to control the agencies that would use that data. It will prevent much more pervasive problems involving people we don't have legal control of until we catch them.
You will have the same freedoms you now have - maybe more as you won't have to alter your personality to duck from the trolls or hide your email address from spammers; your security will be increased; and your in-box will have your email in it instead of a flaming bag of crap every morning.
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IPv6 does support anonymity — see RFC 3041 [ietf.org]. But I ignored that since it would spoil my nice joke.
Traceable IP numbers would not help against spam and DOS, because that's perpetrated through botnets, not through direct contact.
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Except standing in public no one knows who you are.
Id rather stay anonymous on line as well, thank you very much.
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If you do something to disturb the peace, everyone will know who you are. It will be a matter of public record.
IPv6 (Score:2)
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> The leaked MAC addresses would be those of the computers behind the router...
Or whatever number the admin chooses to supply instead.
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Your IPv6 address will include your computer's MAC address, not your access point's.
Someone just bought an iPod Touch, eh? (Score:3, Interesting)
That's the only reason I can think of for this story suddenly coming up right now--this is what the iTouch uses for its location-detection (and I suppose the iPhone uses it, too, in conjunction with its cell-tower/GPS thing). I never knew about it until I had reason to look it up and find out how my iTouch knew where I was.
I thought it was a little creepy the first time I realized my iTouch knew more-or-less my exact location--but on the other hand, it's also kinda neat. Too bad it only works in urban areas.
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It also has some odd bugs. A few weeks ago I was in a Starbucks in suburban Philadelphia, and my iPhone (using the Starbucks wireless network) put my location as being somewhere in Washington state. Whoops.
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hmm, i wonder how much fun can be had getting mac fanboys lost using macchanger and this
Maybe. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Maybe. (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. I dont know what hey use for wardriving, but my stuff can not tell me that router B is in that white house across the street while router C is in the brick house with a pentagram painted on the front door next to router A that is in the doghouse in the back yard of that red teepee.
The story is 90% hooey with 10% sensationalism thrown in for fun.
Re:Maybe. (Score:5, Interesting)
At driving speeds it's harder to find out, but at walking speed (if you actually are on foot, it's warstumbling,) you can easily see the signal strength go up as you walk by the house that the router is in.
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Two points using directional equipment. If they've got the equipment, it's trivial to get a fix.
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Sadly, that's a pretty good signal-to-noise ratio for a recent Slashdot submission.
Grumbles.
Screw you guys, I liked the movie. (Score:4, Funny)
Of course for them to get the MAC of your router in most cases will require either being infected with malware or some sort of social engineering attack.
NORM : Security, uh Norm, Norm speaking.
DADE: Norman? This is Mr. Eddie Vedder, from Accounting. I just had a power surge here at home that wiped out a file I was working on.Listen, I'm in big trouble, do you know anything about computers?
NORM: Uhhmmm... uh gee, uh...
DADE: Right, well my BLT drive on my computer just went AWOL, and I've got this big project due tomorrow for Mr. Kawasaki, and if I don't get it in, he's gonna ask me to commit Hari Kari...
NORM: Uhhh.. ahahaha...
DADE: Yeah, well, you know these Japanese management techniques.... Could you, uh, read me the number on the modem?
NORM: Uhhhmm...
DADE: It's a little boxy thing, Norm, with switches on it... lets my computer talk to the one there...
NORM: 212-555-4240.
So what? (Score:3, Informative)
If someone has some sort of malware running on my computer, they don't need my router's MAC address to find out where I live. And in that case, them knowing where I live is the least of my problems.
Wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't need malware or anything else to get a router's MAC address, it's in every packet the router sends out.
And you can't easily get an exact street address from wardriving. All you know is somewhere along the antenna's main lobe there is a router. Could be 10 feet away, could be 500.
And knowing the MAC address is of no earthly use. Well, in the old days you could map it to a ethernet chip manufacturer, but now most routers have changeable MAC addresses.
You can't map MAC address to email addresses either, as the summary claims. Sheesh.
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But certain Microsoft products use your MAC address.
In addition to WGA, I thought that MS-Word used to store your MAC address in the meta-data of the document.
That way you can trace an anonymous doc to a location.
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Hmm... Sounds like someone is marking the place of the fish catch by putting a mark on a side of his boat.
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"You don't need malware or anything else to get a router's MAC address, it's in every packet the router sends out."
That may be the case, but that address only goes as far as the next router down the chain so unless someone is connected to the original router by a physical connection they'll never find it out - you can't wardrive a cabled network.
Wifi OTOH using radio allows anyone in range to find out its address. Thats the problem.
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>Wifi OTOH using radio allows anyone in range to find out its address. Thats the problem.
What's the problem with knowing a MAC address?
The MAC is not a key to anything except sending a packet to the router. Which is the whole point of having a WiFi router.
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There is no problem with knowing a MAC address.
There is no problem with knowing other small pieces of information, which seems to be useless.
However, there is a privacy problem with knowing a lot of these small pieces of data.
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Actually, the next router on the chain will see the MAC address of the WAN ethernet port, which isn't generally the same MAC address as the radio broadcasts.
But you are certainly correct that it's a link-layer protocol that goes no further than 1 hop.
Problem? (Score:2)
Wifi OTOH using radio allows anyone in range to find out its address. Thats the problem.
So what? There is nothing anyone can do with my MAC address unless they are within range of my router (on the same cable for hard-wired networks). I just don't see how this database would be of any use to someone a number of hops away from me.
Assuming no hacked hardware between us, my MAC address isn't available for a remote site to look up based upon an IP connection.
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Basically the concept is this. Some spammer/phisher already has your e-mail address, through whatever means. Someone else stumbled across the MAC of your wireless router by wardriving your neighbourhood and put your MAC and location into a database. If the spammer/phisher can e-mail you and trick you into revealing the MAC address of your wireless router, he can put together the information he knows to link your e-mail address, wireless router MAC, and physical location.
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And you can't easily get an exact street address from wardriving. All you know is somewhere along the antenna's main lobe there is a router. Could be 10 feet away, could be 500.
Perhaps if you're a crude wardriver. If you're sophisticated, and use a directional antenna on a rotatable mast, or multiple antenans, you could quite easily locate the AP to within a few meters, driving down the street.
The technology isn't hard (it was used in bygone days to do TV viewership ratings, by looking for LO leakage from
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Exactly, if you can see the mac address then youre on my router and you can guess I'm nearby.
This is just as bad as those malware ads that advertise "YOU ARE BROADCASTING YOUR IP"
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You need malware if you aren't on the local network. The MAC address only makes sense at the IP layer. And the packet the router sends out on the Ethernet side is going to have the wrong MAC address anyway.
And the MAC address does have a use if you can map it to a location.
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While getting the exact address is impossible except for remote locations, phishers really don't need it - if you know what neighborhood the machine is located in you can still make a very very "personal" offer just for this one surfer. Imagine someone seeing an "ad" from the local Wallmart including authentic pictures and whatnot claiming they have won a frequent shopper something or other - they just have to fill in some details.
The more personal the attack is the higher the likelihood of people falling f
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Read the original posting. They were talking about wardriving to collect tons of addresses, not spending many minutes driving in circles around a block to hone in on one specific point. That is of course doable in principle, if not practical. And even so, of what use is knowing that 123 Easy Street has a router named "linksys_2367443" ?
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Not much, unless some phisher offers to "diagnose interferens caused of your wireless device" and successfully convinces you to e-mail him your router's MAC. Then he queries the database, and hey look, there's your address!
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They could try to manipulate you into revealing your MAC through social engineering. Say they posed as a net admin... maybe they'd claim your wireless router was interfering with other wireless devices in the area and they needed you to send them the 12-digit code printed on the bottom of the wireless router so they could run a diagnostic. Obviously you wouldn't fall for that, but enough people would that it's something to worry about.
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Good point, however, a phishing/social engineering attack won't initially have your IP address either (just your e-mail address). So there's two points of potential attack. If they obtain your IP they could get a semi-accurate fix; if they obtain your MAC it's possible that they could get a really good fix (triangulation could easily give much more accurate information than merely what street you live on). Like you said, gullible people are easy to fool, but there will always be the odd person who would be
Fate (Score:2)
The thing is... (Score:3, Informative)
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True. However, the fact that I can find YOUR wireless network only if I know the general location doesn't change the fact that I can see half a dozen people's wireless networks from where I sit if I'm not particularly trying to locate YOURS.
Theft Recovery? (Score:2, Interesting)
Late to the party (Score:4, Informative)
Life expectancy of router power supplies (Score:2)
I'm sure I speak for SF network admins when I say: (Score:2)
Guns (Score:2, Funny)
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Not to mention I religiously carry an H&K USP myself.
Phishing Email (Score:2)
I still don't understand how phishing actually works on anyone... once you understand a basic concept - never follow links from emails that are soliciting information - you'll be fine. I guess people are just hopeless
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Poor man's GPS (Score:2)
This thing has the potential of turning your laptops wifi card in a poor man's GPS.
Just check what wifi networks you see, check for them in the db and find your position using signal strength to weight the AP positions.
It would work quite well in densely populated areas.
I have been thinking for long about doing something similar with your cell phone. Just check the visible towers, ask google their coordinates and geolocate yourself (if only the symbian API gave you info on other cells apart from the one you
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Yes but the battery does not last 120h, it does not work inside buildings... and you don't have to carry another gizmo in your pocket just to track your walk in a city.
Google? (Score:2, Interesting)
Isn't this exactly what Google's location api does? Only without the cell tower and GPS functionality?
http://code.google.com/p/gears/wiki/GeolocationAPI?redir=1 [google.com]
I would imagine it would be hard to compete by wardriving when Google has an army of mobile phones querying where they are reinforcing the database.
How *do* I find my MAC address? (Score:2)
I have a Verizon FiOS Wifi / ethernet router. I poked around the settings for the router but I couldn't find its WiFi MAC address listed anywhere.
Anyone know how I can found that address? (On my client I'm running Ubuntu 8.04)
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A label on the bottom ?
Yup. Hidden on the side I couldn't easily see. I was hoping for the more techically interesting solution to the problem, but at least I've got the MAC address now. Thanks.
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I tried that, but found the interface pretty confusing. So instead I tried kwavecontrol, which has a more intuitive gui.
From what I can tell, the linux driver for my laptop's Intel 4965 wifi card doesn't report the AP's MAC address.
Maybe I'd have more luck with the Window's driver, but my laptop only has Ubuntu on it. :(
iPhone (Score:4, Interesting)
Flash your router (Score:2)
and change your MAC every second
yes | awk '{system(sprintf("ifconfig eth0 hw ether %02x:%02x:%02x:%02x:%02x:%02x; sleep 1", int(255 * rand()), int(255 * rand()), int(255 * rand()), int(255 * rand()), int(255 * rand()), int(255 * rand())))}'
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*arp*
Custom lojack (Score:2)
This would be a great DB to have for my custom lojack that reports back to my server the AP SSID and MAC address that any of my laptops are talking to. I'd be able to go to the location myself and verify the AP MAC address is still there, triangulate where the source is, and then notify the police so they could get a search warrant and recover my laptop.
MAC Addresses not unique (Score:2)
One big flaw in this system - as I understand it, MAC addresses are not globally unique as IP addresses are. It's a 48-bit address, but the first 24 are the vendor's ID, leaving only 24 bits for a unique device ID (and these do get recycled). This is good enough in the scope of a local LAN, but Skyhook's system seems to depend on these being globally unique, which isn't the case.
Anyone know how they deal with this?
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Change your MAC?
If you are one of the unfortunate people to be stuck with Comcast (or probably a bunch of other cable companies,) Comcast will charge you to update their records.
With a cable modem under Comcast, your Mac address is your login key.
Re:Quick, Change your MAC! (Score:4, Interesting)
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(Too bad it got modded 'interesting'.)
How is that informative? (Score:4, Informative)
First: I use Comcast. Over the past 3 years, I've replaced wireless routers 2 times (in 2 different homes). The only thing I needed to do to set up a new router was to power-cycle the cable modem; I did not need to change the router's MAC address.
Second: in any case, even if you use some ghetto ISP that tracks router MAC addresses, the external MAC (what the cable modem sees) and the internal wireless MAC (what the wardrivers see) are different and completely independent. You can easily change one without changing the other.
Re:Quick, Change your MAC! (Score:4, Informative)
Ok, a few other people have said basically the same thing I'm going to say, but I thought their answers don't do a very good job of describing the problem for a very non-technical user. Hopefully I'll do better (and if I'm incorrect in any of my statements, I'm sure somebody will correct me... I'm not really an expert).
In other words, there are a lot of MAC addresses on your local network. The key point is this: A wardriver will get the MAC of your wireless router (well, if he connects to the network he might be able to get MAC addresses of your other equipment, but that would only be possible on an unencrypted network). You can change that safely, because it's not the MAC that Comcast sees. (On a related note, changing the MAC on your computer's network card, whether it's wired or wireless, isn't going to be effective, because that's not what a wardriver is going to see. If you're "visiting" someone else's wireless network, then changing the MAC of your wireless card will anonymize you a little, but that's useful because you don't trust the network – in other words it's a different scenario. You generally "trust" your own network.)
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Mine's DE:AD:BE:EF:D0:0D
Dude! That's the combination on my luggage! Now I'll have to change it to DE:AD:BE:EF:BA:BE !
Welcome to the long old line (Score:2)
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