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War driving – the latest hacker fad

Crackers get out of their bedrooms... and into their dad's car

The introduction of wireless networking has spawned a fresh sub-culture in the digital underground. It has brought script kiddies out of their bedrooms and onto the roads.

War dialling, the hacking practice of phoning up every extension of a corporate phone network until the number associated with a firm's modem bank is hit upon, has been replaced by war driving with the introduction of wireless LANS.

Our source tell us that war driving, which is apparently particular popular in Silicon Valley, involves motoring between likely target firms with a PC fitted with a LAN card and trying to break into their networks. Giving the flakey state of wireless security models this is normally childishly simple with even basic cracking tools.

We haven't tried this ourselves but we understand that if you put in wireless card into your PC in hotel or airport environments fitted with wireless access, you can often get a network connection without any kind of authentication.

That aside we don't have much information on the formative war driving community and it'd be sure interesting to know its preferred vehicle.

We reckon it'd either be some ostentatious kit car or else (more likely) their Dad old banger. That's assuming they're old enough to drive of course... ®

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