ELI5: What is War Driving?
Someone drives around a neighborhood with a laptop scanning for Wi-Fi networks, making a map of which ones are open or poorly protected. It’s like walking down the street checking which houses left their doors unlocked.
Definition
War driving is the practice of searching for and mapping wireless networks while traveling through an area—typically by car, hence the name—using a Wi-Fi-enabled device with scanning software. Originally a reconnaissance activity, war driving is used to find open or poorly secured networks for unauthorized access, gather intelligence on corporate Wi-Fi deployments, or identify rogue access points.
Key Details
- Uses a wireless adapter in monitor mode and scanning tools (Kismet, inSSIDer, NetStumbler) to detect all nearby SSIDs.
- War walking/flying/biking: Variants using different modes of transportation.
- WiGLE.net: A public database of wardrive-collected Wi-Fi networks—millions of networks mapped globally.
- Legal status: Passive detection (scanning) is generally legal; unauthorized connection to networks is illegal.
- Corporate risk: War driving can reveal corporate wireless network names, encryption types, and BSSID information—used for targeted attacks (evil twin, deauth).
Connections
- Parent: wireless-attacks — a wireless reconnaissance technique
- See also: rogue-access-point