War Driving - Kit?

[ViLLaN]

Hey Guys,

I know a couple of you guys have done a bit of war driving in the past, and I would be interested to know what kind of kit you recommend for it?

My lappie is an FC3 machine running kismet.. Hardware wise, what do you recommend?

[fauxpas]

somehow, the letters w, t and f just don't have the impact they used to...

:(

[ViLLaN]

That was excellent.. Very helpful!

Now, if any of the guys like mouse, james or bestrafe who would be able to give a proper answer want to have a shot :P

[BeStRaFe]

are you talking software or hardware wise?

running fedora core 2 on a IBM thinkpad with a athero's card for 802.11a / g and a zcomax 200mw for locating networks connected to a 8'dbi omni or a 25 dbi hills.

kizmet
airsnort

are the 2 basic ones... if u need more msn me

[ViLLaN]

Hardware wise.. Software Im sorted, but I wasn't sure about the hardware.. Ill give you a buzz on MSN :P

Thanks for the info.

[RavenKittie]

Villan I used to have a version of Knoppix that was specifically customised for War driving, I think I got it off Hal at Ruxcon. I'll have a look see if it's still floating around :)

[Icefire]

I think Linux_Insidev2 is wanting people to test his Wardriving Live disc, should get in contact with him

[ViLLaN]

Will do, thanks both of you :P

[MaJ]

knoppix STD

[ViLLaN]

Got it :P But I have a more thorough toolkit on my laptop.. The questions are mainly regarding the hardware.

I know what I could use, but I want to know what the best equipment for the job is :P

[Dezza Bot]

Big and powerful omnidirectional antenna, also a directional one if you're interested in finding out the physcial locations of the places you're breaking into

[mouse]

Originally posted by Dezza Bot@Apr 10 2005, 02:28 AM
Big and powerful omnidirectional antenna, also a directional one if you're interested in finding out the physcial locations of the places you're breaking into
78511


Yeah i drive with an omni 8db, small discreet but puts out enough signal to get most of the hidden ones. Your pigtail depends on your card, i recommend an orrinoco chip, haven't had any problems with it under nix (windows is a different story). I take a directional for those have to break into places. I also take a few lengths of lmr with me to chuck the antenna in the back, you can use rg11 with n connections if you wan't to make it yourself (about 1 db less for every 2m). If your going to be sitting still, a tripod for a directional is a must. Oh, the 25b directionals, wayyyyyy wayyy tooooo BIG. Get something smaller.

You need a stand to put the laptop on, no idea where to get a decent one. I went the install your own option. I advise a girlfriend nerd to carry the laptop. I'm not sure if you can download one of those.

The real trick is power, you need to charge your laptop, get a decent inverter, 400w + and wire it into your earth and accessories, don't want that bugger draining your battery, even though a good one will trickle charge once the volts drop. Don't get the adapters that plug into the lighter adapters, or a laptop car charger. They break the lighter adapters in falcons. I don't know about other cars. If you must use the lighter adapter, put a higher amp fuse in. Case in point, it blew the relay on the falcon which also powered the thermo fans, not fun when in sydney........ It was that the adapter i had was too large for the bracket and it pushed the contacts apart too far, they snapped back and short circuit. For the record, i did it twice.

If you are driving at fast speed you want a directional with a 90-180 degree arc, and point it in the direction you are going, if you are sub fast speeds as in 40-60km/h then use the omni.

I lashed out and got a fair amount of gear from rojone, dj coulter have a few specaltiy items, and if you want cheap go microgram (still good tho). I got my first d-link 8db omni from harris, did the job, but i wasn't happy that it had a female n connection, or was it male? meh, it wasn't standard, but is now.

If you want to get a convoy of wardrivers happening, well i'm in.

Oh, always take a spare card or two, at one point i carried about 8 in the car. Some were easier to change mac's in and so on.

Oh, if you are serious, ask me sometime about the time we got chased by these crazy people, the less technically minded might not need wep or wpa when they have cricket bats.

Mouse.

[ViLLaN]

Thanks for that Cowstaker.. That gives me a much better idea of what Im looking for, I appreciate the time you took to write that! :)

[quilb]

Following on from what mouse said:

Wireless card specifics:

Orinoco based cards are great, Although they do require you to patch your Kernel to get it working (i havn't tried it in 3 months so they probably fixed that now).

Prism2 chipset is even better because of the support it has in tools under linux but you need to make sure the card you get has external antenna port.

BEST card you can get power & sensitivity (aka range) wise is the Senao 802.11b high power cards, these have 2x External antenna jacks although they work kind of strangely. you connect 2xAntenna's using 2xPigtails and the card determines which antenna is getting the strongest signal then uses that antenna.

Down sides to that card is that its only 802.11b and also it costs quite a bit (for what it is). You can just run the one pigtail and one antenna on it if you want and it works fine.

Antenna Specifics:

There are some antenna designs on the net. Some of them will work well and others plain suck.

* Spider Omni - This antenna is small its basicly an N-Connector with 4 pieces of wire solderd to the N-Connector screw holes and one piece into the N-Connector Cup.

These suck i got worst signal when using it then i did when i wasn't using it.

* Slotted Waveguide Antenna's - I have not made one of these but i have read lots of good things about them and i plan to use one as a basestation antenna if i ever get a Wireless AP setup for my area. Only downside with these is their size. Even the smaller ones are too big for a car. (unless you have a station wagon and want to setup a mobile station when you stop. :)

* Cut Cable Omni Antenna - Basicly this one is made from thick low loss cable. you cut it into sections and have a part of the inner wire exposed which solders onto the shield of the next segment and the other end to the previous segments shield, the next segments exposed wire is then soldered to the next segments shielding, and so on. i cant explain it properly so its best to do a search for the name as i put it above.

Those are the 3 main ones people try. for a directional antenna you might want to look at the BiQuad Antenna.


Pigtails:
With pigtails you can sometimes find them going cheap on ebay. remember that a longer pigtail is better then a pigtail and an extension. you want to pigtail to go from the wireless card to the antenna in one cable. having extension cables will cut down your signal by quite a bit.



Misc Tools: (for when wardriving)
Leatherman or Equivalent heavy duty pocket tool.
Maglite serves dual purpose here as a baton (self defence) and a light source.
small toolkit including pliars, side cutters, etc. (great for adjusting dropped antenna's)
spare battery.
some way of charging the batterys (see mouses notes above)
And possibly a spare car battery (some guys in melbourne i know sent their car battery flat by using their laptops with the power inverter while their car engine was off. They ended up using a guys wireless link that they had discovered, to get on IRC and call for help from another mate.) TRUE STORY!


************************************************
Most important:
Attend This Years Ruxcon!!!!
When: Saturday the 1st and Sunday the 2nd of October 2005
Where: Sydney University
Why: Australia's Best (and Only?) Computer Security/Underground Computer conference. (think aussie defcon). Im trying to convince one of the guys to give a talk on wireless stuff. Sure its a long way off yet but sooner people know about it the sooner they can put it on the calander.
I have been both years it has been on, a few other CCGL'ers have been too.

Website: http://www.ruxcon.org.au

************************************************



Disclaimer:
The information in this post is only the opinion of the Author (Quilb). And does not represent the opinion of CCGL or its members.

[bugsy]

remember omni's are polarised, ie the more "powerful" (I hate to use that word) it is for a wardriving situation would be worse something around a >8dbi (preferable less maybe 6dbi) would be great, but nothing more as the degree the signal can be recieved in decreases (not good for wardriving, many angles from moving vehicle = win)

[Cyberjazz]

Hey just thought id tell u if you get the the senao card its great but its only 802.11b the things that make it great are the 2 ariels and you can get a patch that makes the card use both but its also got a 200milli watt output where the industry standard is 150 but there are 2 other cards on the market for laptops now that are 200mw and have 2 ariel inputs but now there 802.11g il try and get the brand and model numbers form my mate whose full into wireless

[bugsy]

Thers no point in having dual aerial output as it only will ever work in shared mode, that is the aerials constantly switching