The Low-End Approach To Wireless Hacking 124
Adrian writes "Zack Anderson, an MIT student, created a solution to wardriving on a budget: warcarting. The Warcart is a shopping cart retrofitted with just about every sort of wireless sniffing device available. It has pivoting antennas and a smoke grenade launcher. It can even dispense infected USB flash drives. It's part of a talk about subway fare-collection-system vulnerabilities that will be given at Defcon 16 in a few days." "Mostly as a joke," says the site — but only mostly.
Where's the batteries? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Where's the GPS? (Score:4, Insightful)
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we need defence on these systems because terrorists are attacking out imagination!
Re:Where's the batteries? (Score:5, Funny)
FAQ:
Batteries are in the garbage bags hanging of the sides. They are fuel cells that run off cheap booze and the juice from stinky socks. Old cigarette butts are used to filter the fuel. (And for the occasional smoke.)
No, he isn't talking to himself - his Bluetooth headset is really small.
"The Almighty" is the name of his computer and it uses voice recognition.
It's normal for a dedicated hacker to sleep with his system in doorways and skip baths for weeks on end.
The tinfoil attached to his body helps cancel the effect the body has on wireless reception.
Don't worry if you can't understand his language. His intelligence is super advanced, not deficient.
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Class? (Score:1, Insightful)
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I thought that MIT students would want to demonstrate a little more class. War dialing/driving has been around forever. The concept is old school. I am sorry but I feel that there must be projects from MIT students that are more /. worthy that this.
I agree. The guy who played with the wii controllers to create 3D displays and interactive screens, etc. (can't remember where he was from) also was toying with low end hardware but did show inventiveness and creativity and came up with some genuinely fun stuff.
This is something Calvin would come up with (was Hobbes taking the pictures, is that why there's no stuffed tiger in any of them ?). Ok, except it's a trolley and not a cardboard box with "WarBoXing --No Grils Allowed" scratched on the side...
They re
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The guy who played with the wii controllers to create 3D displays and interactive screens, etc. (can't remember where he was from)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw
He's from Carnegie Mellon University.
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As an MIT graduate, I also agree. This gets a pretty low score on the "hack" scale.
If you are going to cause a disturbance, at least make it really clever (like making the dome into R2D2) or putting the shell of a police car up there. Taking a shopping cart full of computer equipment into a retail store is just stupid.
Somebody should encourage him to take it up to Logan airport. That would be a great idea. I hope it comes with a bulletproof vest for the operator.
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Why...is it against the law to bring a shopping cart full of computer equipment into an airport?
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Why...is it against the law to bring a shopping cart full of computer equipment into an airport?
Of course it is. Doing anything odd or unusual or that makes someone confused or uncomfortable is terrorism.
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Of course not. But neither is it to fill you with lead. As long as everybody is having fun it doesn't really matter of course...
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Cool I want one !!! (Score:5, Funny)
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Disclaimer: No actual data was recorded during the Warcart's maiden voyage. No smoke grenades were launched. The shopping cart was salvaged from an abandoned garbage dump.
Looking back.... (Score:5, Funny)
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Step 4: ...
Step 5: Profit!
Re:looking back to the future .... (Score:1)
Step 7: GOTO Step 1.
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Step 7: GOTO Step 1.
You know, there are these guys in California looking for people like you...
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You know, I've always had the sneaky suspicion that MIT would be the downfall of our society. Young enginneers with too much time on their hands. We can solve this future crisis by getting them each a girlfriend.
Re:Looking back.... (Score:5, Funny)
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It's open to debate whether hordes of robotic cyborgs efficiently killing all human life is worse than hordes of malware infected devices spamming the Internet.
Anyone up for a pool? (Score:5, Insightful)
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No, he is the idiot.
Can't wait for some taxi to crash into his cart and blow it to smitherines.
Re:Anyone up for a pool? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's exactly what's wrong with the world today. Be normal, conform, and nobody gets hurt. Dare to be different, dare to leave the path the "normal" people walk on, and you're "suspicious".
What does he do? He's pushing a cart full of electronics down the road! So? May I only use a cart to push around my groceries? Who said that? Who are you to dictate what has to be in my cart?
Freedom is first and foremost defined by how much freedom you grant to someone who isn't or doesn't think like everyone else. If your freedom to be what or how you want ends at what is defined as normal or "agreeable", China is a perfectly free country.
on what charge? (Score:5, Funny)
Pushing a Trolley with intent?
He might try to make a run for it, That's a cop chase I'd like to see on TV....
charges? (Score:4, Insightful)
At any given moment, you're breaking some law. Disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, etc. etc. Charges are easy to make up. And they don't have to stick, either - the arrest can still be effected. Then there's either some resisting arrest or an accident that results in the cart getting tipped over and all the equipment breaking.
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No, you're wrong, I used the correct word for the intended meaning - "effected," in the sense of to bring something about. My usage becomes a bit clearer to the inattentive when the agent isn't elided:
And they don't have to stick, either - the arrest can still be effected [by a police officer].
"Affected" wouldn't make much sense in that sentence frame, or the paragraph as a whole.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Anyone up for a pool? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you really think any cop on the street can identify that for what it is? I'd rather guess he'll be arrested for pushing around something that looks like a highly sophisticated kind of bomb.
Later the things you list will be brought up, to avoid making the cop look stupid.
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From TFA, Abandoned in a garbage dump. If it still had a store logo on in and they really wanted to throw the book at him then they *might* get him on possession of stolen goods, but it'd be a stretch.
Forget the police, what about getting turned over? (Score:2)
Forget worrying about the police, how about local street kids? You're probably ok wheeling it around the university campus and in the nice middle class streets nearby but a trolley full of expensive very disposable electronics in some neighbourhoods is going to get you some unwanted attention from people looking to make a quick buck.
yes yes I know it's just a bit of college student fun and not to be taken seriously... just somebody warn the kid eh?
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I'm gonna start a pool on how long it takes before the guy using this gets 'detained' or otherwise harassed by the gov't for looking suspicious. I give it a month.
So do you think his best efforts to remain covert while using this thing were all in vain? </sarcasm>
Everyone seems to be missing the, "mostly as a joke and for reasons that will be disclosed in this talk at Defcon 16" part of the article.
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It was only a joke officer, honest. Well, mostly a joke.
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Since traffic counters [wbztv.com] and blinkenlights [boingboing.net] are terrorist tools in Boston, I'm surprised this guy got as far down the street as he did before Homeland Security detained him for our safety.
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I'm gonna start a pool on how long it takes before the guy using this gets 'detained' or otherwise harassed by the gov't for looking suspicious. I give it a month.
You've never walked around Harvard Square? He probably fits right in.
next up... (Score:2)
pffft. an exercise in pointlessness - but strangely appealing to my inner geek.
been done already (Score:2)
Warboating has already been done:
http://www.panbo.com/archives/2004/04/boats_wifi_warboating.html [panbo.com]
Obnoxious. (Score:3, Insightful)
A shopping cart loaded down with monitoring and recording equipment?
That's cool. Some tool pushing it around, broadcasting music, and pretending private property is public? That's rather obnoxious.
The operator seems to be the only difference between an interesting application of technology and some douche nozzle who wants his fifteen minutes of fame by trying to coax people into a conflict just so he can "make a point".
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Some tool pushing it around, broadcasting music, and pretending private property is public? That's rather obnoxious.
I thought it was pretty funny. Especially the deadpan comment about everyone looking at the cart because it was loudly playing the sound of an analogue modem.
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I would take this more as a sign of not enough beer.
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Yes, but if you are choosing properly between wasting time building the thing and wasting time drinking a beer, getting seen with it isn't a problem, it doesn't exist.
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Uhhh... (Score:4, Insightful)
Only from MIT would something so stupid get so much attention.
A bit of history?! (Score:5, Informative)
FTA: To understand the Warcart requires one understand a bit of history first. Wardriving, that is, driving with a laptop computer and tracking WiFi access points, first became popular around 2001.
Well, if we're going to talk about history, how about wardialing [wikipedia.org] in the 1980s, clearly the precursor to wardriving. The name goes back to the movie Wargames, in which the main character writes a program to find compuers by dialing phone numbers in sequence -- so the first wardialers were called "WarGames Dialers".
As I recall, we could wardial thousands of phone numbers in a night and net several dozen modems... boy, that was awhile ago. Get off my lawn!
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In fact, they could also find computers, not just compuers.
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CompUSA'ers? What's that now? Hard to find people who still shop there?
Re:A bit of history?! (Score:5, Informative)
To clarify, the name war dialing did not come from the movie. It was around long before the movie. The movie did a rather nice job of being accurate with how it worked - until the computer just started speaking on it's own later in the movie.
War dialing turned up interesting results because many locations dropped VT100 onto a POTs line and had no log in authentication. In many cases you would dial up and if you had your emulator set right, you were root.
With most interested in hacking the Internet, I often wonder if these type of open doors have come back into existence. There are many Ethernet->analog line "out of band" maintenance devices being put in place...
Re:A bit of history?! (Score:5, Informative)
The _concept_ and _practice_ of "wardialing" was around long before "Wargames". The name was adopted as a reference to the movie.
Anyone who tells you differently is just trying to promote their book.
Interior Lights (Score:5, Funny)
Interior lights add to the intimidation factor of the Warcart.
Yes. Yes, they certainly do.
Suicide attempt? (Score:1, Troll)
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Only if he attaches one of these [wikipedia.org] to the front of the cart though.
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A serious note (Score:3, Insightful)
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Isn't that more to do with the fact that routers mostly now arrive with encryption turned on?
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Yes.
Shame on you slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
I started looking at the comments before watching the video and every other one was putting this guy down and calling him a douche-$(insertwordhere). After watching the video, it appears that half of Slashdot has no appreciation for feeding the inner geek, and is just pissed off that this guy had live females stop and actually talk to him.
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As opposed to dead talking females.
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As opposed to females on WoW and 2nd life who are maybe talking, but aren't female.
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No, I'm just impatient for the Segway port of this baby.
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Walmart (Score:2)
Some precious moments in the video so far... (Score:2)
3:45 - Skycart creator scores with "real" female geek. *nawcom saves for fap material*
3:54 - Camera person seems to have a different preference... uggh. *nawcom loses hard-on*
4:25 - Proof that the camera person has a day shift at some store as security where the owner is racist; The owner "rings the bell" in the back room every time a person of african heritage walks in.
7:48 - Steve Dompier from 1970s must of created a time machine with the Altair 8800 and come to the 21 century.
Okay enough reviewing for no
Push! (Score:4, Interesting)
warcart? riiight (Score:1)
Cordless phones... (Score:3, Informative)
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Around 2000, I owned a cheap cordless phone (purchased because it was purple and my girlfriend liked it) on which you could eavesdrop from our TV by twiddling around with the UHF tuning. the handset from that phone would also occasionally pick up signals from neighbours' handsets or bases, I never heard enough details to figure out which and we could only ever hear one side of the conversation. I'm glad they're a bit more secure nowadays.
Brilliant (Score:4, Insightful)
Then again, this comes from a guy who spends ALL of his spare time making wireless thin clients out of old laptops for mounting in picture frames and other surfaces in his house. Gotta get on that solar power next, this shit is getting expensive.
The point, to hell with all you nay-sayers. Go back to whatever boring, gainfully-employed thing is is that you are doing while the rest of us have fun.
Low-end wireless? (Score:2)
What's next? (Score:1)
High tech bag lady is all he really is... (Score:2, Funny)
I should really change the password to my wireless network....
BRING out yer dead! (Score:2)
Noooo!! I dont wanna go in the cart!
I dont mean to troll but I want to hit this guy... (Score:1)
This isn't smart. It's not novel. Its hardly worth a talk at Defcon. The "rationale" seems to be almost an afterthought or perhaps a brainfart one might have while waiting at the MacDonalds drive through for a burger and a coke.
In 2001 I made a box with a friend consisting of a laptop with busted monitor, 200mW SENAO 802.11card, USB drive with data, GPS with custom power supply and a magnet mounted omnidirectional antenna. Total cost was about $200AUD (most in the WiFi Card). We put it in a delivery truck
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Anyway, enough blowing my own horn.
Judging by your attitude, I suspect you spend more time blowing the horns of others.
Looks Suspiciously Like a Dalek (Score:1)
Comes equipped with ... (Score:2)
World of Warcart (Score:1, Funny)
How long before this is made into a video game?
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Walmart... (Score:2)
Walmart wants their shopping cart back...
Italian Job (Score:1)
Someone has been watching the Italian Job too many times.
Smoke bomb launcher? (Score:2)
I stopped reading there. While it might strike the geeks as a potential gut-buster, to me it's just insane to put anything that launches smoke bombs on a wheeled contraption you intend to use in public. Remember what happened to those marketing people in Boston last year when they caused Authority-Figure-Panic by sticking little boxes with flashing lights on them all over the place?
Mostly as a joke (Score:2)
And mostly harmless.
Can you sniff it? (Score:1)
Googleing
"and from this * came the * of all *" -groove
Only came up with this, someone who couldn't spell "groove", and something unrelated.
War praming (Score:1)
I don't think it affected him much, though we did have an American chap round earlier asking if we knew anything about 40 million stolen Credit Card details....