Connected Collar Lets Your Cat Do the War-Driving 110
MojoKid (1002251) writes "Security researcher Gene Bransfield, with the help of his wife's grandmother's cat, decided to see how many neighborhood WiFi access points he could map and potentially compromise. With a collar loaded with a Spark chip, a Wi-Fi module, a GPS module, and a battery, Coco the cat helped Gene identify Wi-Fi networks around the neighborhood and then reported back. The goal here is obvious: Discover all of the unsecured, or at least poorly-secured, wireless access points around the neighborhood. During his journey, Coco identified dozens of Wi-Fi networks, with four of them using easily-broken WEP security, and another four that had no security at all. Gene has dubbed his collar the "WarKitteh", and it cost him less than $100 to make. He admits that such a collar isn't a security threat, but more of a goofy hack. Of course, it could be used for shadier purposes." (Here's Wired's article on the connected cat-collar.)
Re:Shades of the 1960's CIA "Acoustic kitty" (Score:4, Informative)
No, the truth is that there are a couple of folks who split 25 million dollars and one squashed cat intermixed with some random electronic parts.
Re:Open WiFi (Score:2, Informative)
Unsecured and proud of it. I am amazed, in all the locations I've lived, typically I see about 10 networks around me. Mine is consistently the only one that is open and free. Just about everybody who's come over has asked me, "aren't you worried?" About what? The FBI gonna take me in for not encrypted my wireless? Truth be told, for whatever reason, I always had to reset the damn thing in the past when I used a password. Now that it's open, it works like a champ. I don't recall resetting it for over 6 months now. Maybe a year. Maybe 2. Pretty damn amazing. Karma?