Hardware Tools for Wardriving

What is Wardriving?

Wardriving is commonly perpetrated by individuals driving around in a vehicle while using software and hardware that assists them in locating unsecured networks. The use of a vehicle is not required, and wardrivers can also scan for networks to attack when on foot, on a bicycle, or even by using aircraft. Whatever method of transportation is used, the goal is to secretly penetrate WiFI networks.

Hardware Tools for Wardriving

There are several hardware components that are required in order to practice wardriving.

A mobile device
You need a mobile computing platform in order to conduct wardriving activities. This includes laptops, tablets, smartphones, and other devices such as the Raspberry Pi. These perform overall management of the process and are used to subvert encryption.

Wireless network card and antenna
These are a critical part of the wardriving setup. The wardriver may use the card and antenna built into their mobile device or may opt for additional hardware in order to increase their scanning power. This component provides the ability to remotely monitor the discovered networks.

GPS system
The GPS system is used to determine the exact location of the WiFi routers that have been located. Many of the mobile devices used for wardriving have built-in GPS capabilities.

Software WiFi Sniffers

There are many different software applications that serve the purpose of WiFi sniffing. You can download these tools for just about any operating system. Some of these tools have advanced features that allow you to do more than just locate the nearest wireless network.

Tools such as Wireshark and Network Miner serve as WiFi sniffers for the Windows platform. Users can download tools such as aircrack-ng or Zanti to perform WiFi sniffing on an Android device. There are many applications that enable WiFi sniffing on a Mac as well. We are going to use a free WiFi sniffer named KisMAC to see how you go about capturing WiFi traffic.