Software for Defense

There is plenty of software available that facilitates wardriving and wireless cracking; unfortunately, there really isn’t much in the way of software that you can use to defend yourself. The best thing you can do is download a couple of the programs that wardrivers use so that you can check your own network and see how vulnerable you are.

Using a wireless laptop and a stumbling program, you can go outside and determine how far your Wi-Fi signal travels beyond the walls of your house. Using this software, you’ll get an idea of what wardrivers see when they find your network. Two of these programs are NetStumbler and Kismet.

Together, these programs cover the two principal forms of scanning — active and passive. NetStumbler is an active scanner. It sends out packets and tries to get access points to answer. Kismet can scan passively by listening for Wi-Fi broadcasts and analyzing the network traffic. Kismet is more effective at discovering hidden networks (those with SSID broadcast disabled), but you’ll need Linux to run it (a Windows port is in development). You can find out more about these programs on the Web sites listed at the end of this chapter.

FakeAP is a useful program for deterring wardrivers. FakeAP helps hide your access point by giving wardrivers what they are looking for. It broadcasts hundreds of thousands of fake access point signals (more than 50,000, according to the creators) hiding your access point among all of the fake ones.

FakeAP runs on Linux and takes a little skill to set up, but it’s certainly an effective way to help hide your access point in plain sight. You can download FakeAP at www.blackalchemy.to/project/fakeap.