What is wardriving? Wireless piracy at work.

As a result of manufacturers' default settings that leave wireless encryption switched off, thousands of wireless connections are totally unsafe. Groups of wireless users have started to take advantage of this 'free' bandwidth that can found everywhere:

But what does wardriving mean? Simply put, it takes place when you drive around with your laptop to connect it to wireless networks that are not secured. This makes it possible to get around the physical security that large companies have and easily make a connection to their networks: in these cases, we say that the network leaks out of the building. Although wardriving used to be very complex in the past, today it's not difficult at all to use software such as NetStumbler to look for open networks automatically.

This can happen because wireless networks are, by definition, made to allow access to any wireless-enabled computer present within their range. So, even though it is very convenient and simple to use, it is undoubtedly very insecure too.

Although the legal status of wardriving is doubtful to say the least, most people who do it don't actually have any wicked intention.

Of course, some others do try to exploit the enormous amount of bandwidth (download capacity) to have access to and download huge files at astonishing speeds. And there are also those people who try to access a company or individual network with malicious purposes.

Wireless Piracy

The question of whether it is possible to 'pirate' wireless Internet access is a matter of great debate among wireless users. While it is absolutely obvious that you shouldn't go and sit outside someone's house in a car, is using one of your neighbors' wireless networks instead of paying for your own ISP and Internet connection something wrong to do?

Unfortunately, it is impossible to determine whether a network has been left open deliberately or not. Some people prefer to leave their network open for anyone to use because they just see no danger in doing so.

Others simply don't know how to turn on security. The problem would be easily solved if wireless equipment would be automatically set up with encryption turned on (so that you would have to modify the settings only if you didn't want it). Sadly enough, because the two current encryption standards are incompatible, this is not likely to happen soon.

To sum up, the choice is yours and yours alone: you're perhaps not causing much damage using your neighbors' connections, provided you don't download so much that you slow down their connections.

There's, however, a very fine line when it comes to places where ISPs charge for access on the basis of the gigabyte. Whenever in doubt, try to rather stick to your own network.

Should You Be Worried?

Some people get extremely anxious when they learn their network is not safe: they immediately think hackers will steal all their personal information. You might even find people selling what they call 'wireless intrusion detection' software. Keep in mind, though, that the Internet is designed to work over wires all of us could tap into: sensitive information is encrypted anyway.

Even though you shouldn't worry about people getting to your web data, you must be a little more afraid of all your shared files and folders. If your network is not encrypted, don't share anything that you wouldn't want others to have access to, and you surely shouldn't allow the network write (change) access to things you don't have a backup copy of.

Of course, if you really want to stop people from using your network, read the next article, 'Dealing with Security Threats: Wireless Encryption Premier', for some interesting guidelines.

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