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Warchalking
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
in General Chat
Have any of you heard of this? I have and i know quite a few others have as well. If not, in brief
'War Chalking, invented by Matt Jones, is a simple set of symbols used to denote discovered 802.11 wireless networks.'
In a nut shell people draw marks on office buildings which gives a symbol that it is possible for anyone to access the wireless network contained inside, from outside the building.
http://www.blackbeltjones.com/warchalking/index2.html for more info.
What are your views on this, and have you ever seen one in real life? I have yet to find someone that has!
FanBoy
'War Chalking, invented by Matt Jones, is a simple set of symbols used to denote discovered 802.11 wireless networks.'
In a nut shell people draw marks on office buildings which gives a symbol that it is possible for anyone to access the wireless network contained inside, from outside the building.
http://www.blackbeltjones.com/warchalking/index2.html for more info.
What are your views on this, and have you ever seen one in real life? I have yet to find someone that has!
FanBoy
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Comments
The idea is good in principle but telling people theres a IEEE802.11b network around opens HUGE security risks. We had an interesting example of the potential threat to Wi-Fi out here when a security expert decided to do a test and walk down the main street (Queen Street) in the centre of Auckland with a wireless PCMCIA card and 'scan' for networks, he was able to log onto many companies who had little or no protection... I heard about something similar being done in London.
This site demonstrates 'public wi-fi' markings, but again you still have a similar secuirty risk for anyone who doesn't know how to secure their machine properly.
Imagine if you will 'Bob' who's got a laptop and has just bought a PCMCIA wireless card and see's one of these markings and thinks "You know, I reckon I'd be quite a contender in a game of counter strike" and so logs on and starts playing... now 'Bob' has Windows 2000 professional with his administrators account as his name and no password protection. Someone could stumble quite easily over 'Bob's' machine and log on to C$ and delete this that and the other...
These 'markings' are still in development and there are no standard markings yet for IEEE802.11b
Anyone considering implimenting, considering or using their own Wi-Fi network should check out:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;Q309369&