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Wardriving: How To Create Wi-Fi Map Of A Town Using A Raspberry Pi


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Wardriving is an activity in which a person drives around the streets in order to track Wi-Fi networks in that area. The data can be collected using a device running a wardriving software. Security Researcher Scott Helme describes how he made his wardriving tech and created Maps by using collected data.

If you haven’t made any plans for this weekend. You might want to consider wardriving. It’s basically driving around your locality in search of Wi-Fi networks using a device like a computer or a smartphone and a wardriving software.

Scott Helme is a security researcher based in the UK. In a blog post, he describes how he installed his Wi-Fi finder tech in his car and powered it using the 12v charging socket. He taped a Raspberry Pi 3 on the window glass. The Pi was connected to Wi-Fi and GPS antennas mounted on the rooftop via USB cables. He used an ethernet cable to connect the Raspberry Pi 3 with his MacBook which was used to collect data during the trip (Find photos below).

“With the ability to drive at speed, collecting a large amount of data was easy. In total I gathered information on 10,442 different access points,” wrote Scott. He then uploaded the data to Google Maps.

Scott notes that there has been a considerable increase in the number of Wi-Fi points in the area since the last time he did wardriving in 2013. He has also uploaded the gathered data to a crowd-sourced wireless mapping platform called Wigle where wardrivers can upload their findings and contribute to the world map of Wi-Fi networks.

Before this, Scott created a handheld portable version of his wardriving tech but he says that he is a bit lazy and “most importantly, you can go a lot faster in the car” covering a larger area. He plans to use his findings in his future research project.

Other than pursuing his wardriving hobbies, Scott has also created securityheader.io which allows you to check whether proper security measures like HSTS, HTTPS, CSP, etc are deployed on a website or not.

Once you manage to create Wi-Fi map of your town or city, You can find plenty of open networks and remain connected to the internet most of the time without paying for cellular data.

You can read about how Scott created his portable wardriving tech in detail and take a look at the Google Maps of wireless networks in his area.

If you have something to add, tell us in the comments below.

Also Read: How To Turn Raspberry Pi Zero Into A Tiny Dongle Computer?

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