Wardriving is a cybersecurity term that refers to the action of driving around a city with the intention of discovering and mapping the physical location of open and unsecured Wi-Fi networks. Like most internet tools and activities, wardriving can be used for good or to harm others.
On the good side, a wardriver seeks open hotspots for the improved education or security of others. On the harmful side, wardrivers are nefarious hackers looking to exploit open or unsecured networks for their own selfish gain.
In this article, we’ll dive deeper into the definition of wardriving. We’ll also cover a brief history of wardriving and offer practical tips to help you stay secure. In other words, this article includes everything you need to know about wardriving.
Wardriving defined
Wardriving is the act of searching for open Wi-Fi wireless networks by driving around an area using a Wi-Fi-enabled device (such as a laptop or smartphone). The purpose of wardriving isn’t usually to identify just a single open hotspot. Instead, the purpose is to build a larger map of where these open (or easily accessed and unsecured) networks are located.
In a sense, wardrivers are digital cartographers. Their primary goal is to build a Wi-Fi map of a particular street, city, or nation. That’s why wardriving is also called by another related name, “access point mapping.”
Wardriving can go by many names. Near the end of this article, we’ll provide a full list of alternative terms and their definitions.
A short history of wardriving
The history of wardriving can in some ways just be told as the history of Wi-Fi. The reason is simple. As long as there have been remote access points to the internet through hotspots and wireless routers, there have been people trying to access those networks.
The modern version of Wi-Fi was launched in 1997. Most work and home networks still took a few years to adopt remote technology. But even as more people started using hotspots, there was minimal effort put into encrypting these networks.
The standard hotspot encryption technology of the early 2000s (and into the 2010s) is known as WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy). This technology provided users with the remote hotspots they were looking for. But WEP, unfortunately, provided minimal security or privacy on its own. This meant that a high percentage of global homes and businesses were susceptible to being discovered by wardrivers.
Source: WiGLE
In September 2001, an open-source project called WiGLE (Wireless Geographic Logging Engine) was born. This was a key moment in the history of wardriving because it gave white hat hackers a way to contribute to the larger education and security of Wi-Fi. Today, most white hat hackers who participate in wardriving do so because of WiGLE.
Wardriving also became a common activity used by pen testers (penetration testers). When a pentester is hired to find weak points in a business or home, one of the tools they commonly leverage is wardriving. In this sense, the pentester is pretending to be a black hat hacker. They leverage wardriving as a means to potentially hack their client.
Wardriving has remained popular among white hat and black hat hackers for the same primary reason: Wi-Fi networks are often easy to find and unsecured. However, wardriving’s hay day is probably behind us. While it’s still a common hacker activity, wardriving has lost some of its popularity. There are a few reasons for this:
- Most of the easiest Wi-Fi networks to discover, map, or hack have already been discovered
- Wi-Fi networks are becoming more secure, thanks at least in part to organizations like WiGLE for raising cultural awareness around the general lack of hotspot security
Of course, just because wardriving is less common today doesn’t mean it’s disappeared. Hundreds of thousands of new Wi-Fi data points are uploaded to WiGLE every day—proof that the wardriving community is still going strong.
The risks of a wardriving attack
When you first learn that hackers are driving around your city trying to find and map unsecured and open hotspots, you probably met a natural question: Is wardriving legal?
Wardriving in and of itself is not illegal. However, as soon as you begin accessing someone else’s Wi-Fi network for nefarious purposes, that quickly becomes illegal. So, what are the risks of being hit by a wardriving attack?
The risks (and the illegal side of wardriving) begin when someone attempts to access the network without the owner’s permission. If a stranger can take control of your Wi-Fi network through wardriving, then they may be able to access devices or information from that network.
The primary risk of a wardriving attack is your personal privacy. If someone gains access to your network, they may be able to see any unencrypted data that’s being accessed from other devices (like computers and phones) that share the network.
Also, a wardriver may try to borrow your internet connection to perform illegal activity. Instead of the activity showing up on their own home network, it shows up on yours instead.
Alternative names for wardriving (and their definitions)
Wardriving is the most famous term to describe the much broader activity of access point mapping. But some people also call wardriving by other names. Here are a few of them:
- Access point mapping: This is the more technical term for wardriving. Rather than emphasizing the activity of driving around, this definition refers to what people are doing on a network level: finding and taking advantage of open internet access points.
- Warwalking: Warwalking is the same as wardriving, except that it refers specifically to people who seek out accessible networks while on foot.
- Warbiking: Also known as “warcycling,” warbiking refers to access point mapping that takes place from a bike.
Protect yourself from wardrive attacks
Now for the big question: What can you do to protect yourself from Wi-Fi hacks and wardrive attacks? Here are a few simple steps you can take:
- Use a strong randomized password on your Wi-Fi network
- Next time you change your router, switch to one with strong encryption
- Regularly monitor the activity on your Wi-Fi network—and change the password if you see anything suspicious
In addition, it’s important to remember that you can’t always control when or where you need to access the internet. Even if you are aware of the dangers of using public Wi-Fi networks, for example, it doesn’t mean you won’t occasionally need to access them.
That’s why it’s important for everyone who cares about their personal cybersecurity to take advantage of a secure VPN. So, what is a VPN, exactly? A VPN encrypts your data and funnels your online activity through a private network. This helps better protect your personal online activity and makes you more anonymous, no matter the network you’re using to access the web.
