RYANMETCALF.NET Wardriving resource page
I'm currently transitioning my personal homepage for a bit to Google Sites, till I get things figured out/hosted elsewhere, but have a small (but growing) collection of resources and datafiles related to wardriving. http://www.ryanmetcalf.net/wardriving (or permanent link)
Largest KML yet!
As of now, we have 8593 points in our latest stumbler log, which has already been converted into a KML and is ready for download here: http://www.ryanmetcalf.net/downloads/kml/wardriving/master_kml/coverage_chart.kml (16 mb) we also have all of our other individual KML's (a lot smaller to dl, though some points will be duplicates in the small files. The earth logo below and the one above the posts will take you to our KML repository.
(just because we wardrive everywhere we go, there a quite a few hotspots from Lawrence, KS and St. louis, MO included in the KML file (s))
Indentifying Wireless connectors
After ordering a couple of different wireless connectors for my helical waveguide antenna project and not getting the right ones, I decided to get smart and use a guide located on the internet. The clip below highlights the type of connectors I have on my Linksys WRT54G (v1.1) wireless router.
Male RP-TNC
Female RP-TNC
TNC connectors are usually found on access points such as the linksys WAP11.
Wigle: It's for finding hotspots
So, if everyone's out there collecting all of this wardriving data, they have to be sharing it somewhere, where? One of the sites that supports users to upload their netstumbler (and other sniffing tools) logs to is Wigle. Wigle then takes that data and compares it to their existing data, using it to correct existing hotspots and place new ones onto the map. You can perform searches by SSID, address, state, metro, etc.
Converting Stumbler data into KML
In response to Kyle's post about converting kismet data into KML's for the Linux crowd, I thought I'd post up information for the windows/netstumbler crowd. Simpler then writing a conversion script, as is with the case of the kismet transfer, software called Earth Stumbler exists for transferring stumbler logs very easily.
Integrate your logs into Google Earth !
Here's an article I found on http://www.digg.com about a guy who has taken his log files and put the data into Google Earth, not very hard, and a pretty cool deal. So read up.
Wardriving is fun. Going around the neighborhood and mapping all the wireless networks may be nothing more than a geeky hobby but it can sure teach you alot. And viewing the results in Google Earth is icing on the cake.
I’ve used NetStumbler on windows and this works great but since my computers at home are now nearly Microsoft-free, I had to relearn the process on Linux. It breaks down into a few easy steps:
Install the drivers for you wireless card. On my HP laptop with a Broadcom card, I followed the instructions on the ubuntu forums which worked great with one exception: the driver link on that page doesn’t have a valid md5 sum so you can download it from this url instead
Install gpsd. This is the software that talks to your gps unit and is available in the ubuntu packages through apt. The one hitch is that I had to set up my Magellan GPS unit up for the correct baud rate and NMEA output. Once installed, I connected the GPS unit via a serial port, turned it on and ran gpsd /dev/ttyS0 to start the gpsd server.
Install kismet, the wireless packet sniffer. The version in the ubuntu repository is not recent enough to support my Broadcom driver so I had to download the latest source and compile it with the standard configure, make, sudo make install . Then I had to edit the /usr/local/etc/kismet.conf to reflect my system configuration; I changed the suiduser, source and logtemplate variables. Once configured, you can start it with the command sudo kismet.
Now drive/bike/walk around for a bit with your laptop and gps unit. When you’re done, shutdown kismet and you’ll have a bunch of fresh logfiles to work with.
The main kismet log is an xml file containing all the info on the available wireless networks including their SSID, their encryption sheme, transfer rater and their geographic position via gpsd. I worked up a small python script, kismet2kml.py (based on a blog entry at jkx@Home), to parse the logfile into a KML file for use with Google Earth. It could certainly use some tweaking but it’s a start. To run it, give it the kismet logfile and pipe the output to a kml file: kismet2kml.py kismet-log-Jul-03-2006-1.xml > wardrive.kml
Now fire up Google Earth (Linux version now available!) and load your KML file.
Also, as James Fee points out, posting your data as KML files means that the data can be integrated into a growing number of kml-ready apps including google maps (just upload the kml and point your browser to http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://your.server/wardrive.kml).
Another neat application I’ve found for dealing with kismet logs is the kismet2gpx script for converting the kismet gps tracklog into gpx. Since most gps units have pretty tight limitations on the length of stored tracks, logging them to your laptop with kismet could be an effective way of creating detailed tracks on very long trips.
WELCOME TO WARDRIVEJOCO!
Welcome to the new blog for the wardriving community in Johnson County, KS! I'll skip the small talk and get straight to the point. Yes, were all a bunch of nerds with laptops, something that moves, and a GPS unit, we drive around and track wireless connections throughout the community, why you ask, why not? Here post new tools, applications, ideas, drive logs, and anything else you want in relation to wardriving. So get out there, find some new information and let's have some fun !
For all of you Johnson County residents that understand the fun in wardriving heres the blog for you. Whether its posting the newest wardrive results, security tips, or changing legal issues regarding Wi-Fi, it's posted here.
