Connected Collar Lets Your Cat Do the War-Driving

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.)

Shades of the 1960's CIA "Acoustic kitty"

[innocent_white_lamb]

Over $25 million dollars was spent to install a battery, transmitter and microphone into a cat, with an antenna in its tail.

They dropped the cat off to eavesdrop on two men in a park near the Soviet Embassy in Washington DC. The cat was hit and killed by a taxi while walking across the road.

The project was expensive, gruesome, and a failure. It was abandoned in 1967.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A... [wikipedia.org]

http://mentalfloss.com/article... [mentalfloss.com]

Overages and legal liability

[tepples]

When someone uses your connection excessively in the opinion of your ISP, watch "an choice" become "an bill". Or when someone uses your connection for copyright infringement or child pornography, watch "an choice" become "an lawsuit" or "an criminal charge".