Reaping the Rewards: A Little Bit Goes a Long Way

He continued this same routine for the next few days, as requested in the letter he was given. Although there was a big chance this was just a prank, Saul wanted the money. Besides, there was something to be said about being away from his home every day. Gawd, I can t wait to move into the dorms. All I need is the money and I m out of there. He thought of his mother again and sighed deeply.

On the last day, Saul headed home right after school to create the report. The report was fairly easy to generate. Saul copied the raw MiniStumbler files in their native .NS1 format and plugged them into NetStumbler on another computer. From here, Saul was able to convert the data into comma-delimited files and dump the numbers into a database. Some of the statistics collected were used to create the actual maps and images for his report. He still wasn t sure that this mysterious man would ever actually contact him again, but he hoped to eventually turn his work into a commercial service and make a living doing what he loved. So, technically, his time wasn t really wasted even if he didn t make a dime on this job.

The hospital was using a large wireless network that was bridged across multiple access points in the various wings. The coverage was much larger than required for the hospital, but Saul assumed that was so that the doctors could grab lunch out in the plaza by a fountain while still updating reports on the network.

The fact that the hospital was even using a network was impressive, much less wireless networking. St. James was a state-of-the-art facility compared to the other medical facilities in the country. But the hospital was still using early 802.11b technology access points that are rather chatty about their locations and use a weak encryption scheme. Because the access points were all bridged, the identifier on each one was the same, stjames.

Saul had been able to collect an appropriate number of key packets to break the WEP encryption in only a few hours. To his surprise, the WEP key was set to st.james-hosp. With the number of key packets that were transmitted, Saul determined that the access points were most likely an older model of the Lucent AP-1000, but he would need a walk through the hospital to be certain. I ll do that another time. It s not really necessary for this report, he thought to himself.

The final map was clear and easy to read. Saul was able to see the area around the hospital where wireless signals were accessible.

Map of the Hospital s Wireless Signal

Saul added the new numbers to his own collection of local wireless information and settled in to his normal routine. The next meeting wasn t for another week and he had finals coming up at school. Grabbing his homework from his book bag, Saul lay on the bed and began to study.