So now that I have my new laptop I decided to download netstumbler and hit the road... before i go any farther i would like to remind you all that it is illegal to connect to anyone elses wireless network with out their consent...  I know that I might have said that it was ok before but after doing some legal research it is againt the law, no questions asked...   So i decided to see how many people really knew what they were doing in my local area... I wanted to see what type of systems were running and wether someone in a car could actually drive by and connect to their systems because there was no protection at all... I did not connect to anyones system or their network because again that is illegal... but i was able to determine wether or not they had wep enabled on their network...

After about 45 min of driving in a town of about 20000 in the northeasten suburbs of Chicago I was able to get 245 known Access Points, APs, from my car driving 25-40 mph...  51% had no WEP protection enabled and of those 90% of them were on their default setting, Channel 6 and Default set as the SSID... A large number of those were the 802.11b Linksys models...  There were a few that had been move to other channels my guess is that someone was not happy with the proformance so they change the channel but forgot about the ssid and the WEP....  The ones that were protected for the most part were the 802.11b Dlink turbo systems that run at 22mbs, the 802.11b/g Linksys, and some of the 802.11b linksys... I have very few of the netgear routers and I had no 108mbs routers     Or atleast they werent running that fast... Although my card is only 54mbs qualified....   Overall I thought it was a really cool thing... I just drove around and listened to my laptop make all sorts of noise when I would hit a residential area...  I even drove past some of my friends homes to find out that their stuff was unprotected and still setup like it had just come out of the box...  The coolest one that I picked up was at a local coffee shop... That one i can legally connect to...  

So dont act like a noob... enable the wep protection and get a ssid that is original...  That way if some dude in a beat up volvo decides to hack the CIA or something you will not provide the access he needs...   Plus who wants to share the speed they got with the entire world?

I have MAC authentication on my network...  Back in the day I used to drive in my truck with my laptop and snoop ~~ but all I would do is find unsecure networks that had shared printers and print off a document showing them how easy it was for me to get in and also letting them know about WEP and MAC AUTH  ~~  but that was also back in the days when my friends and I would tap into drive thru frequencies and mess with the Taco Bell and Mc Donalds people...

The people who are working in the resraunt can hear this all... but can't really do anything short of walking out there and talking to the customer in person

Us -- "Welcome to Tabo Bell, would you like to try a New Crunchy Chalupa?"
Person in the car -- "uhhh, no... can I get a Number 1 with Sprite?"
Us -- "No"
Person in the car -- "Ummm, are you kidding me."
us -- "Naw, just kidding... what do you want again?"
Person in the car -- "A number 1 with a sprite."
Us -- "Sorry but we're out of meat..."
Person in the car -- "No way, can I talk to your manager!"
Us -- "Sure one second"... ... ..."This is Jeff"
Person in the car -- "The other guy just said your out of meat, what's going on?!?!"
Us -- "Well we ran out of all of our meat at about 1pm after the lunch rush... so now we are just F#@&ing with our customers."
------- and the customer peels out most likely going to call the corporate office :-p

We were stupid... and out for a laugh.... they would always change their frequencies... but it only took a max of like 5-15 minutes to scan the new one half duplex can kinda be a bitch... it's simply great when they use simplex, scan that one pretty quick bah ha ha -- we also would radio in fake calls to Mall security guards...  

Yea those guys always fell for that S#!t... they were always ready for action.  We would make a call and watch the guy in his truck peelout and do a 180 trying to 'get to the scene of the crime' --- all while we were laughing our asses off in our car :-p