Wardriving

Post date: May 26, 2012 12:32:56 AM

Originally posted June 26, 2008

For a few years now, I’ve wanted to learn about what War Driving was all about. I recently purchased a GPS device for my laptop which allows me to scan for Wireless networks and log the GPS coordinates of the Wireless networks that I’ve found while driving around with it running. I later take the data and plot it onto Google Earth which allows me to see all of the Wireless networks I’ve found overlayed onto a Google Earth Map.

To see some screenshots of how it looks or even open the data in your own Google Earth program (if you have it), see below:

Google Earth KML files

• • The complete list - Last updated 6-30-2008

Screenshots of the progress

• April 10, 2008: Just beginning

• April 15, 2008: Over 3000 AP's already! Note that I went out to Santa Clara, and started logging from there to Menlo Park and back.

HOW I DID IT

• Software:

  • 1. Kismet (Wireless scanner)

    2. GPSD

    3. GPSDrive

    4. MySQL

    5. a MySQL to .kml exporter

    6. and Google Earth (Linux version, of course ;))

• • See http://www.larsen-b.com/Article/212.html for the best HowTo

    1. I don't want to re-invent the wheel, so Props to whomever Larsen-B is. In a nutshell:

       1. Startup MySQL (don't forget that you need to install the geodata DB using the gpsdrive script)

       2. Startup gpsd (to have the GPS device ready for the latitude/longitude data gathering from other programs)

          1. Configure Kismet with GPS (/etc/kismet/kismet.conf), and startup kismet (or just kismet_server if you want, the client ncursers GUI isn't needed for this). This will detect the gpsd running, put your Wireless card (802.11a/b/g if you've got it!) into a monitor mode where it sets the hardware to listen only (i.e. it'll never transmit beacon probe requests and give ya away like NetStumbler does), and will catch SSID's and even their clients, and log the GPS coordinates where it heard it loudest as you move around the world!

       3. Startup festival (oh yeah, I didn't tell you about it yet, it's optional, Google it)

       4. Startup gpsdrive. If all is well, you'll hear "Kismet detected, happy wardriving"

       5. After gathering data, shut everything but MySQL down and run the gpsdriveToGoogleEarth.py script (which grabs the data out of your MySQL server and exports it to a Google Earth .kml file).

• Notes:

• 1. I had to install the "mysqlclientlib10" package for GPSDrive to work properly with MySQL. Until I did that I was getting a "Select Call Failed()" error streaming away when launching gpsdrive from the command line.

     1. The gpsd startup might need to be run with a -K if your using a USB GPS device like I am (The Delorme LT-40 that I bought for $39)

  2. I have to take some gibberish out of my .kml files after the gpsdriveToGoogleEarth.py export with vi, but hey, it works! There's a few other scripts to convert GPS/Kismet data but none that I've found that take it out of MySQL. Using MySQL and GPSDrive keeps it all in the same area, after multiple sessions, and GPSDrive checks with MySQL before adding a new entry detected by Kismet and doesn't log the same SSID's twice.