Page 801 - (ISC)² CISSP Certified Information Systems Security Professional Official Study Guide

War driving is the act of using a detection tool to look for wireless
networking signals. Often, war driving refers to someone looking for

wireless networks they aren’t authorized to access. In a way, war
driving is performing a site survey for possibly malicious or at least
unauthorized purposes. The name comes from the legacy attack
concept of war dialing, which was used to discover active computer
modems by dialing all the numbers in a prefix or an area code.

War driving can be performed with a dedicated handheld detector,

with a personal electronic device (PED) or mobile device with Wi-Fi
capabilities, or with a notebook that has a wireless network card. It can
be performed using native features of the OS or using specialized
scanning and detecting tools.

Once a wireless network is detected, the next step is to determine
whether the network is open or closed. An open network has no
technical limitations to what devices can connect to it, whereas a

closed network has technical limitations to prevent unauthorized
connections. If the network is closed, an attacker may try to guess or
crack the technologies preventing the connection. Often, the setting
making a wireless network closed (or at least hidden) is the disabling
of service set identifier (SSID) broadcasting. This restriction is easily
overcome with a wireless SSID scanner. After this, the hacker
determines whether encryption is being used, what type it is, and

whether it can be compromised. From there, attackers can grab
dedicated cracking tools to attempt to break into the connection or
attempt to conduct man-in-the-middle attacks. The older and weaker
your protections, the faster and more successful such attacks are likely
to be.

War Chalking

War chalking is a type of geek graffiti that some wireless hackers used
during the early years of wireless (1997–2002). It’s a way to physically

mark an area with information about the presence of a wireless
network. A closed circle indicated a closed or secured wireless
network, and two back-to-back half circles indicated an open network.
War chalking was often used to disclose to others the presence of a
wireless network in order to share a discovered internet link. However,