Place to post anything related to wardriving.
Our current wifi wardriving team:
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I figured it might be a good idea to do a short little explainer for people new to or who have never heard of wardriving, I’m sure there are a few people out there who don’t know.
What is Wardriving?
Wardriving is passively scanning for broadcasting SSID’s aka network names and storing them into a database with other information such as; GPS coordinates, Time and Date seen, and signal strength. Its kind of like Pokémon with Wi-Fi SSIDs, Bluetooth, and cell towers. Networks broadcast their SSID’s and your phone will pick those up every time you open the search for networks, Wardriving takes that a step further and will save those network names into a database for later reference. This data can be used in a number of ways, a database of free or open wireless access points, population density mapping, creative Wi-Fi name inspiration, or scoping out if your going to be able to find an Xfinity/ATT/Verizon access point in an area before traveling.
Is Wardriving Legal?
Its not breaking into or disrupting wireless networks so its not illegal. Breaking into networks you don’t own is illegal and is not advisable.
What is WiGLE
WiGLE aka Wireless Geographic Logging Engine, is one of the longest running databases and mapping systems for wardriving data. Their main site can be found here: https://wigle.net/ where links to the official app can be found on either F-Droid or Google play. WiGLE also has a handy API which makes website integrations and custom search tools easier to build.
Getting Started
To get started all you need is an old phone, there are more complicated setups that involve using a Raspberry Pi GPS module and a tool like Kismet but the easiest method by far is the mobile phone application. You can upload directly from the app or export the database to a CSV and upload it to WiGLE directly.
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