Toughbook Wardriving with Linux

I took my new/old CF-28 on it's Maiden Voyage, and it worked out very well. This is a new thread, because my first post that mentioned wardriving covered a lot of topics.

The basic wardriving RF hardware I used was familiar to me, a SMC 2532-WB PCMCIA card (Prism2 chipset), a pigtail to convert connections, with a 5.5 db magmount antenna. I am using a serial GPS here, but Black Friday sale items are on the way...

The wardriving software I use is Kismet, it's Linux only, and generally considered one of the best. For Windows, Netstumbler is very good

The vehicle is a full sized Chevrolet van, with a wood console. Once I removed the cupholder I can bolt a cheap aluminum laptop cooler to the top of the console. Drilling two holes in the lower horizontal rim of the laptop cooler (that match the Former Cupholder holes) lets me drop it in, and tighten it down with wingnuts in 30 seconds. I realize this is no Crown Vic mount, and in the event of a bad crash, I could be killed by it. In this trial run, I realized the cigarette lighter plug extending to the right could be a problem for my passenger/wife.


Here is a side view of the mounting method. Notice the PCMCIA pigtail exposed! These problems are why I am interested in utilizing the miniPCI slots with an internal card and homebrew jacks for antenae. In former wardriving hardware setups, I have gutted unused battery carts, and used rubber surgical tubing for strain relief. In this Maiden Voyage, I used the blue webbing strap to give temporary strain relief. The DC adapter plug will be replaced with a 90 degree one, to keep from intruding into the passenger space.



Here is a closeup picture of the PCMCIA and the DC connections.





Once I got it all running, the 'drive went very well. For convenience, I often use Gpsdrive in addition to Kismet for a live map. Here is a screenshot of Kismet running over Gpsdrive.

 

Nice thread! The first things I thought of were that you need an internal wifi card for sure. Get an Atheros based, 400mw card from these guys...


http://shop.defactowireless.com/s.n...34Pa38Ta38LbN50?it=A&id=931&sc=2&category=239

Then you can install a U.fl to SMA bulkhead pigtail going out the side of the Toughbook. You can then use a mag-mount, rooftop type wifi antenna. No pain, no strain!

The one thing I though about was that you could level off your mount and use a stool type rotating bearing to be able to spin it around to any position... driver... passenger, etc. I agree though... It wouldn't pass the crash test. Ideally you should get a mount specifically made for the CF-28.

Good job!

 

picoshark- That is a nice set-up and I too would recommend the panasonic dock with the pass-thru connector for external wi-fi You also may want to get the right angle power plug so it doesn't stick out so far. On a side note I know you mainly use linux but have you been able to get that SMC-2532 to work in windows on netstumbler? I love that card but I wsh I could get it to work with NS in windows.

 

This is my wife's daily driver, so my wardriving in it is limited. What I hope to do is get a CF-27, and have it live in my car trunk, for daily wardriving. For this temporary setup it worked pretty well. The CF-28 screen opens so far down, it can still be horizontal, even with that angled laptop stand.

Toughbook, I haven't use any Atheros cards yet, but I am interested in them. The high power is not a plus, since I don't transmit. The completely software operated radio is interesting to me, though.

I only use magmounts when driving, and have always hassled with pigtails. Two cards, two antennae, that will let you scan twice as fast. That's why I hope to get two miniPCI cards going. Here is something I did on a former laptop, to protect the pigtails. I gutted a battery box, threaded surgical tubing through it, and it worked very well, keeping the two pigtails held tightly against the laptop. It was quite easy to remove the battery, and snap this in it's place for mobile use:


tough-2-go, I can't advise you too much on Netstumber, as I have never used it. They have very active forums, that might be a good place to find out. Be sure to search before posting, they can get kind of short if you ask a commonly-asked question.

 

And here is a map I generated, showing most of my track while driving. The colors shown are random, but of 1059 networks, there were only 215 using encryption! Overall, in recent years there have been more and more using encryption, but on this drive there weren't very many.

 

Is GPSDrive compatible with XP or 2000??

 

I think GpsDrive is only for Linux. People have gotten it to run on a variety of PDAs, but that involves blowing the original ROM away and reflashing it wwith Linux. I first used GpsDrive on a Zaurus 5500 PDA. It made me nervous, but I had no problems.

The last map above was generated with gpsmap, it comes with Kismet. Kismet stores data files, and after the 'drive you run them through gpsmap to generate a variety of maps While the range circles are cool, they are very approximate in that situation, just going down a highway. In theory, a whip antenna radiates more or less a perfect circle, but real life, it's usually quite different. gpsmap notes the first time you saw each AP, then will draw mathematically triangulated RF radiation circles for you, based on all of your locations logged. In real life, the refrigerator, or big filing cabinet distort the pattern. If you have driven across at least two sides of an AP, it can be quite accurate. Even better, if you drive slowly, and all around an AP, it can generate a polygon displaying the precise pattern of the detected 'sphere of influence'. The range circles are fun and pretty easy, though.

There is of course tons of GPS software for Windows, but one of the things that is unique about GpsDrive, is that if you are online while you are mobile, you can view a network of your buddies as well. You see an icon for them live as they move, and you can send a popup message to them that appears over their live map. With more and more cellphones using GPS, I think this will become a huge thing in the next few years. Here are several screenshots of GpsDrive running on various platforms.

Kismet and GpsDrive can hook into each other as well (that's what I love about open-source software). You can display approximate locations of APs over the live map as you drive. This is very cool, but realistically, you have to be zoomed in pretty close or they can overlap a lot. All it takes is one high-rise apartment to make it an un-readable blob. Here is a screenshot of an older version of GpsDrive, with the detected APs from Kismet:

 

Bummer..... maybe I'll have to get another 28 or 27 and use Linux on it....
Thanx for the reply.. awesome screenshot of it..looks like there is everything ya need ...

 

Picoshark... Can you do us all a favor? Especially those of us that are very interested in going to Linux.. Or maybe having a dual boot machine. Could/would you start a thread about getting started in Linux... Maybe a "Linux for Dummies" tyoe thread. Starting out with what you'd need, where to get it (Legal of coarse) and the programs you'd need. It sounds like you have generated a lot of interest with your posts on the subject.

I'm shocked at the amount of unencrypted networks you found... Especially in this day and age. I guess that is why there is so much identity theft... People being careless! I did the same thing in my neighborhood and found that over half the networks were unprotected. I sent an email to the newspaper person in our neighborhood community association about it. They printed it and the percentage went down to about 25% unprotected. Still too much. I can't believe that there are that many people who are just that stupid. But then again... Ahhhh... nevermind.

Anyway... A nice tutorial would be great.

 

Great idea. I never did much with linux because i'm baffled by all the different distros that are available. Never could figure out which one to use!

 

Sure, I'd be glad to. My spare time is also spent with http://s-t-d.org it's a live CD of Linux security tools. We're preparing for a long overdue release.

As far as security? On the average, people are idiots. In the real world, people are flooded with 'new stuff'. For every geek, there are five people whose have a VCR that is flashing 12. They know they can fix it, but have lost the manual, and/or don't have time to learn it again. Technology is cheap, and that is both a blessing and a curse. It's great, because things are constantly better/faster/cheaper/smaller. It's bad, because if something has poor ergonomic design (like a VCR where you have to scroll through many cryptic screens to find a setting), then people use it as long as they can, and will put up with it. "Good Enough" stands for too many things in this day and age.

I would wager that most of the people on here are geeks and tinkerers. This is partly why security overall is so bad. Joe Average doesn't have time to learn it all. Technology is cheap, and WorstBuy (tm) has that new AP for $14 now! Joe Average (who knows no network or computer terms in the first place) is suddenly confronted with too many new words. WEP, AP, WPA, EAP, WIFI, B, G, when all he wanted was to be able to download his email while sitting on the couch. Joe's favorite computer acronymn may only be AOL. He is afraid that if he keeps juggling around with it, he may 'break it'. Once he gets the wifi up and running, he is universally overjoyed. He also doesn't want to muck around with it, and make it stop working. The manufacturers are partly to blame, the default settings are usually completely insecure.

/security rant off....

Gravitar, I know what you mean. Linux has both the blessing and the curse of diversity. The various distros have many that are slanted towards this or that. While they are all based on a common kernel, they all do things differently enough to be confusing. In general, a good way to dabble with Linux without having to commit yourself is to play with the live CD's. Knoppix started it all. It is a variant of Debian. Purists love Debian because it is the largest/olded non-commercial Linux. It has become the leader in recognizing hardware live, and on the fly. I also recommend Sidux as a live CD (that's what I installed on my CF-28).

Any liveCD will seem slow, because they have about a gig of software and OS crammed into a 700 meg CD. It lives completely in RAM, and every menu choice that you choose is extracted on the fly from the compressed disc into ram. The benefit, is that they do not touch your existing hard drive, and you can play all you want, you reboot and it's gone.

I'll be gone for a couple of days to a security symposium, but I'll start a new thread about Linux on a Toughbook.

 

I'm running Ubuntu (Dual boot) on my Toughbook. The only thing I don't like is I've been trying for months to get the touchscreen to operate...

If I could get that to work, I'd use linux alot more. I hate trackpads.

 

Yes, Ubuntu is wildly popular now. You know, don't you about the name? Ubuntu is an ancient African word that loosely means "I can't configure Debian"....

Ubuntu is another Debian variant (as is Sidux). I'm working on creating a remastered Ubuntu distribution for my work right now (I love this open-source stuff). Limited use PCs, to be used by Joe Average. I don't know about the touch screen, I don't (think) that I have one. The Ubuntu forums are very busy, there could be some good searching there. Trying +linux +"touch screen" on Google gives a zillion hits, but I don't know about the Panasonic touchscreen hardware. I use a Fedora/Redhat variant at home, and I know it has had generic toughscreen support for some time.

I dislike having to manually 'sudo' for system changes, but it keeps people from running as root all the time. I guess.

Trivia:
Debian was created by a guy named Ian, to honor his girlfriend Debbie. Really.

 

I know Ubuntu is a pretty novice linux, but it offered the most bang for my out of the box install (I didn't have an ethernet card in my first toughbook, but I did have a wireless card, and it was too much effort to burn CDs with the packages I'd need to get Madwifi running on something else )

What I do like about linux though is that it's free, and if you hate a distro, you can try out another one with minimal cost (download time and a burned CD, and I like to re-seed the torrent for a few days unless I really hated it). So I've ended up with 6 different distros on my newest toughbook, and I'm always willing to try more.

 

I second the Linux Help - I dove into that pool about 2 weeks ago and swimming like hell to stay afloat - Just to give you hope I am not even close to you guys in skill level and I have a 600MHZ 28 running Freespire - very cool stuff, especially the free part. Anyway would be great to get a good thread going to share info and get us up to speed - dual boot is a very interesting concept - Thanks a ton guys you rock -

 

Yes... I like the idea of a dual boot machine. So far I've read a little bit about having Linux boot and run from a CD... What about installing it on the laptop. Do you still have total functionality? Touchscreen?... Etc...

 

adding linux to a dual boot should be easy, no? I've been dual booting W9x/NT and W9x/XP on my toughbooks for years, once you've got the boot.ini set up it isn't hard to add OS choices to it.

 

It's easier with Grub. Many linux distros will add it into the boot sequence automatically, and once it's configured it works great.

All you need is a separate partition to install the other OS on.

 

This is probably a dumb question and is going off on a tangent, but what's up with wardriving? What is to be gained by it, other than the pure knowledge of who uses wifi and who doesn't?

 

I think it's the whole concept of using "other" peoples wifi to connect to the internet....lol.. at least that's how I see it..

 

First and foremost, it's a hobby so you can learn more about wireless networking, getting better range out of your card, learning about antenna principals, etc.

What some people scan for is vendor type to see if enough people trust a certain product for wireless, and if the router has great range. It wont' tell you model numbers, but the maker is usually listed (Unless your router is really badass, then it's usually fake. My buffalo can be seen for blocks and shows up as fake).

It can also be used to evaluate an area to see if you've got dumb neighbours that don't protect their network.

Just as a reference, I drove from Northridge, CA to Encino, CA (a distance of 6 miles), and found 370+ networks, and only half were protected.

 

Ok THAT I can understand! But if i'm to believe the wikipage, wardrivers don't actually use the access point to get on the internet, they just record its existence!

 

Gravitar... You are right... That's all they do... But it is a hobby. There supposedly is also all sorts of chalk markings they can leave to let other wardrivers know what, where, when, how... etc...

I remember as a kid going on "Rabbit Hunts" with my Dad who was heavily into amatuer radio and built all his stuff... Radios, antennas, etc. Someone would hide somewhere and broadcast on a timed basis. The others would use triangulation to try to find the "Rabbit". It was a really fun game and we used to do it monthly as I recall. I have a trophy in the shop for best something or other... I'll have to check. There were people who would hide in the strangest places... In a drain culvert... on top of a water tower, etc. It all had to do with emergency preparedness and being able to find a downed person who could transmit but couldn't move. Wardriving is similar I guess. How to find a signal when you really need one.

 

I'm back from my conference, I have a bunch to catch up on at work for a few days. Wardriving is a peculiar pleasure, that doesn't appeal to all all people, nor even all geeks. Wardriving is not connecting to their network at all, just enumerating their existence, their conditions, and their approximate location. It does help you learn a lot about wifi, just observing how the world sets up their wifi (usually not at all, they are Joe Average and thrilled to get it working).

While it sounds fun to be online almost anywhere from an open AP, it's not a good idea, and illegal in USA. Parking in a residential neighborhood and fiddling with a laptop is a good recipe for a neighborhood watch to call the police.

Above and beyond all, it's an ongoing, worldwide competition. After you get logs, you upload them to a central place, that correlates the results along with everyone elses. Wigle is perhaps the biggest one. You can also generate maps of areas. Many see this as a precursor to crime, 'casing out the joint'. Anyone who has wardriving at all knows that you can find it about anywhere. Wigle also lists public free hotspots, so can be useful in planning a trip.

My wife, who is non-technical, enjoys seeing all the funny things people name their APs. Apart from the vast majority named Linksys, or Dlink, there is some humor there. Everything from "Bobby's Secret Lab", to complete name and street addresses, to "Jim Sucks At Golf" (apparently set up for Jim by a golfing buddy).

I am proud, because I can be counted among the best in the world. At Wigle, there are 71,000 users, 3800 people actively wardriving, and my current rank is #57. I live in a rural area, and the truly 'big guys' get more in a month, that I have totalled in five years. I am in no danger of being in the top ten. Nonetheless, being on "the first page of Wigle" is something to be proud of. At least for people that care about this stuff. People form groups, and compete against other groups as well. You get to watching the other people near your rank, and have little sub-competitions as well. I see now that dang Dashby went driving last week, and is now only 358 away from me. It looks like I need 17 more to move up to #56. I wonder what my wife has planned this weekend.........

 

And you do this in a full-size van? Sounds like an expensive hobby I can't imagine just driving for pleasure in the suburban we just got! I would be looking for an old omni or festiva to do it with!

 

I only actively do it when we are already going somewhere. Yes, I can't afford to just drive around for hours in that thing. In cities, war-biking actually does very well, they get a lot more data, and more accuracy. The van is always a temporary setup. That's why I'm interested in keeping a CF-27 in the trunk of my daily driver, as a dedicated wardriving setup. My Black Friday bargain GPSs are supposed to arrive today.

The top guys already travel a lot. Pizza delivery guys do quite well also. Salesmen, truckers, these are jobs that help. One of the top guys is a tour bus driver.

This last year, on Wigle they called for everyone to donate tips. It gives a very good overview here. Remember, I am a fairly casual wardriver, but I stick with it. The truly hardcore have a PC in the back, with 11 cards, and 11 antennae. They don't scan, they just listen all the time.

 

Gravitar, that's why I don't wardrive in the hearse... it's not cheap.

I just hope adding overdrive pushes me to 13mpg on the highway... because I'll still be below 10 in the city.

 

I got my Black Friday bargain GPSs today. They are very impressive, compared to my old ones. USGlobalSat BU-303 (Sirf II chipset, USD $9.95) and BU-353 (Sirf III, USD $19.95). Using my old serial Garmin indoors would barely/eventually get three or four sats, these would be getting 11! I could close my hand completely around it, and it would drop to 5.

I've had problems briefly losing GPS lock during wardrives, this should help a lot.

 

We call them "Fox" hunts now..I had one hunt were I had everyone stooped at a river.. the could see it wasn;t on the one side..so they went to the other side.. showed it was the "other" side lol.. I had hid it on a little island in the middle of the river....which you could only get to from one direction...which was the opposite direction they had started from..
You are correct with the Emergency Preparedness .. but we have also helped with malicious interference issues as well. Where scumbags intentionally interfere with with Public Safety communications.. i.e Police & Fire frequencies.. the FCC hands hefty fines to those guys..!!

 

Picoshark... When will our Linux tutorial be ready? I'd really like ot get one going. If you'd like... Start a new thread.

We'd all appreciate it believe me...

 

Took the TB for a quick drive last week, I got about a thousand new AP's, moved me up one notch to #56. I need almost two thousand new ones to move up to #55. Here is a snippet of the drive. The blue track is where I drove, the map does not have all the streets in this new subdivision.

In just this neighborhood, I got 213 APs in about 5 minutes. What was very different, was that 61% of them were encrypted, 36% were not. This is the highest percentage of encryption that I have ever seen. Perhaps there is a neighborhood geek, that is setting them up for the residents?

 

No WPA protected APs?, or can Kismet not identify (or maybe display) the difference between WEP and WPA?

In my street, I am surprised at the number of networks still only protected with WEP.

 

Kismet does, but I don't think this separate mapping program does.

 

This is a screenshot of wardriving too fast. 30 MPH is a better speed than 101 MPH.

 

Here is an airport, using a Terraserver image for the background:

 

I think I had mentioned this before, but did not have a screenshot. A very cool feature of GPSdrive is that if you can be online at the same time you are mobile (cell, wifi, etc), you can view the locations and speed of your friends (or anyone else using the same server). You can send them a message individually. As more cell phones continue to have Java and GPS, I see this as a huge market in upcoming years. Parents can watch their kids, their kids can watch their friends.

You can choose different icons, I am being shown with a little car. I don't know these people being shown, it looks like perhaps only one is in the USA.

 

I got to wardrive today again, and had a very good day. 2884 new networks, moved me to #51 (for now). I had perhaps one of my highest concentrations today, in an apartment complex. 303 new APs, in about five minutes.



The more people per square foot, the better, it takes less driving. Big offices are OK, but not the best because their wifi is (hopefully) managed by IT, and spread out for coverage. High-rise apartments are the next best, because all of the people have their own APs. The very best perhaps is college dorms. They all have broadband, they all bring their own APs in. It has the same high concentration of people per square foot, but the majority of them move in/out every semester, so there are always fresh ones! Drive these tall buildings slowly, and perhaps a couple of times.