Campus Wardriving

We had a plan for the night. Try out some new war-driving innovations. I had a few new new tricks to try out. One was a long magnetic CB antenna. I had changed the end from an N-type to a BNC to fit my mod'd WiFi cards. Further fun could be had with what we have been calling 'the bazooka'. This is four soup cans duct taped together which gives roughly a 43 decibal gain to your WiFi card.

The magnetic mount antenna failed to give us anything. Perhaps because the cable was too long, and it was in no way focused to the range we needed. The bazooka was just too damn big. It probably wouldn't have even fit into DM's truck cab. So we left it all behind. The weapon of choice for the evening would turn out to be the "Kaluha-tenna", and the first WiFi mod we did with a D-Link card.

Before leaving out, we got drivers loaded onto Discount Mans VAIO, and loaded up his truck with our lappys, the inverter, and our winter caps. It was damn cold. We headed out to the OSU campus area, picking up access points all the way. DM offered to purchase me a fine coffee brew, so it was onto Stauffs the coffee shop. We could barely get in the door. It was packed. After a few minutes we scored a table with an outlet. Which was good, because I have no battery in my lappy, and DM's is on it's way out.

DM played some UO games, and sent many instant messages. Sometime looking around, seeming confused, and then going back into his deep state of concentration. All the while I attempted to access file shares on neighboring yuppy coffee drinkers. The banter around me made me sick. I got a guy behind me talking about heat sinks. For about 40 minutes. Heat sinks. This other fat idiot plopped himself down and broke his coffee mug. It was this hideus looking vase thing that he probably made himself. I wanted to pick up the larger of the two pieces and beat him with it.



I also played with DM's QuickCam and took some fun pictures, which you are seeing decorated my Blog nicely. The coffee ran right through DM and he hopped up to piss. There was a guy sitting behind him with a chick who really seemed happy to the fact that a camera was pointed at him. I thought this shot of him "cheesing" for the camera is priceless. His date looks real amused with him too.



So we took a drive through campus. And all I can say is "wow". It was a goldmine of activity. In many ways. It was Saturday night, and you couldn't swing a dead cat without striking a drunken college student. Heading through some alleys with the Kaluha-tenna at hand we got some strange looks, and some nasty comments. DM heard one guy call us "the fuzz", indicating that we might be the undercover campus cops. We got mooned. Nothing like staring down 5 or 6 hairy asses. At which point we moved on.

We headed up and down the sorority and dorm areas and were finding mass amounts of access points. Sometimes as many as 8 at a time that were all serving handfuls of active computers. The bad news was there was absolutely nowhere to park. When DM was finally able to find a parking spot, it was hard to reach the WAP's. The trouble with using a cantenna is that your receive strength is always much greater than your send.



I found a few open shares and some stuff I really wanted. Like "I'm fixin' to die rag - By Country Joe and the Fish". It's a great song about Vietnam, and a tough MP3 to acquire. Yet ... it was *just* out of reach. It irritated me. And everyone in the dorm was running Windows XP. Most of them were sharing nothing. Jerks. We'll teach them. We'll rename their access point.



As the WAP rebooted there was a long pause before it started advertising again. But it came back. Here is us reconnecting to it under it's nice new name.



Discount Man then drove me through his neck of the woods to explore some University owned areas. Naturally, they were all WEP encrypted. Boring.

We went by DM's house so he could let his dog out. And I was also able to attach to his access point. He has his set to hand out IP addresses on a 192 network. Yet, he runs a 10. network. Other than that little gag, it was wide open. So we decided to make some security changes on it, and also rename it. The name is based on a Flash show someone made about Papa Smurf having his ass licked. Inspiring.



Driving through the 'dirty dorms' we came across a residential network. It's referred to as 'ResNet'. DM says his students are always talking about "haxx0ring res-net" like it puts you right up there with Kevin Mitnick. So we thought we might try and get into the WAP. It was simple. Default passwords. We contemplated changing the name of the point to the full name of one of the students. Just to incriminate them. I know ... not nice. But we decided to try and use a question instead. Complete with a question mark which I wasn't entirely sure would work.


There was a LONG pause there. Something didn't seem right. Just as we're driving off, it showed up with it's new name.




Whew! We wouldn't want to leave college students without connectivity. DM was more than ready to move on. There were about 3 security vehicles patrolling a very small area. And we were getting some odd looks. DM was ready to head home. I was too. It was about 2:15AM.

On the drive home I continued to review our results on DM's lappy in Netstumbler. It was awe inspiring. I just *have* to get a cantenna rig going on Audrey (my iBook). As it was, DM's VAIO had all the fun this time. Poking around DM's hard drive I come across that awful "Magic Stick" song and begin playing it. He's rolling his eyes saying "when did you download that?". I sware it was on his hard drive. So I play it full blast. He had his bass booster plugged in to his VAIO's accessory bay. So it sounded real nice.



All in all, it was a great adventure. DM headed back to the place he is house-sitting. And I ran up to bed with Audrey to begin this blog. But it was 3:00AM at this point and I was tired. So I put Audrey down and watched some TV with Rotary who I had woken up a few times being so noisy. Sorry. :-( The coffee was keeping me up. And Rotary seemed to be kept up with a cold. I eventually passed out.

Now, its the following morning and I need to get my son's computer going. I promised him Linux, and his computer is just hosed. Locking up, losing the CD rom. It's just broke. I think I need to start over with different parts.

See you later.