Wireless Wardriving

Wardriving is the practice of searching wireless networks while moving. Originally, it was explicitly referred to as people searching for wireless signals by driving in vans, but nowadays it generally identifies people searching for wireless accesses while moving. Despite the legal aspects, this “quest for connectivity” spawned a quite productive underground community, which developed powerful tools, relying on cheap and standard hardware. The knowledge of these tools and techniques has many useful aspects. Firstly, when designing the security framework of a wireless LAN (WLAN), the knowledge of the vulnerabilities exploited at the basis of wardriving is a mandatory step, both to avoid penetration issues and to detect whether attacks are ongoing. Secondly, hardware and software developers can design better devices by avoiding common mistakes and using an effective suite for conducting security tests. Lastly, people who are interested in gaining a deeper understanding of wireless standards can conduct experiments by simply downloading software running on cost effective hardware. With such preamble, in this chapter we will analyze the theory, the techniques, and the tools commonly used for wardriving IEEE 802.11-based wireless networks.