Your Wireless Network Is Naked: Saturday

“War drive” will expose wireless networks:

IN 25 LOCALES in seven countries from Alberta, Canada, to New Zealand, they plan office-building drive-bys armed with laptops, radio scanners and antennas, aiming to intercept signals from the ever-spreading wireless networks used to connect corporate computers with each other and the Internet.
For many of the hacker types who will participate, war driving is a benign electronic scavenger hunt meant to alert companies and others to unprotected wireless access points that can leave owners vulnerable to spying or sabotage.

MARKETING OPPORTUNITY
But to computer-security experts, “war-driving” has turned into a marketing opportunity. Past war drives embarrassed a number of companies, and in preparation for the big event this weekend, some of these experts have been pitching their services.
This week, for example, International Business Machines Corp. has been urging sales representatives to warn corporate clients of the need to secure their wireless networks. The merchandising tie-in: Your network can be safeguarded by an IBM security service that goes for $15,000 to $30,000.
In London, risk experts at the British affiliate of accountants KPMG LLP have developed a fake wireless network called a “honeypot” that was announced at a security conference in Paris last week. It’s a countermeasure designed to attract and record unauthorized wireless-access efforts-in effect, alerting network owners that they are being homed in on by war drivers or other unauthorized people. The firm hopes that the honeypot will enable it to sell more of the security services it offers through its consulting arm. Among the services: a team of “tame hackers” who attempt, under contract with the owners, to break into financial-service-company networks to expose risks.
Another company tuned into war driving is Guardent Inc., a Waltham, Mass., computer-security firm that offers monthly assessments of its customers’ networks to spot rogue access points. “We make sure people are aware” of the war drive because it shows the need for vulnerability analysis, says Jonas Hellgren, director of product management at Guardent. But he adds that focusing only on the event isn’t as valuable as a continuing sales effort.
War driving bedevils security types partly because it is so cheap and easy to do. Drivers amble around with a directional antenna sometimes fashioned from a coffee or potato-chip can. Their software of choice, called NetStumbler, comes free on the Web and detects the low-level radio waves coming out of wireless-network access points.
War drivers say their goal is to publicize the need for network owners to change their passwords. But people with knowledge of the location of an unprotected wireless network can also use it for free Web surfing, or to send out e-mail messages or junk mail known as spam without disclosing their identities. With more sophisticated hacking, people could use the wireless gateway as an entry point to corporate networks, security experts say.
In a related activity, called “war-chalking,” participants make chalk marks on sidewalks or building fronts to signal the availability of access points. One widely used symbol for an open access point looks like this: )(. Knowing such locations permits people with laptops to avoid paying for Internet access.

For more info on the drive, see the website here. Regarding war-chalking, the site says it’s “stupid.”