Hotspot Hunting
By beetle | April 17, 2008
Yagi? Check. Tripod? Check. Custom firmwared AP? Check. In a hotel room with no Wi-Fi? No worries! Thanks to the “WiFi Predator”:
“The predator is a modified wireless router connected to a high-powered antenna and running custom firmware to actively seek out open wireless connections. Once they are found, it will test them for internet connectivity and then join and repeat the one with the strongest signal to secured wireless connection that YOU control. =)“
Thanks, Drew!
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XKCD needs more wireless shtuff
By beetle | March 11, 2008
This is all I could find. 
Funny enough.
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Up on ur antennaz wit ellyDEEEZ
By beetle | March 9, 2008
Last ToorCon, Ken mentioned a groovy radio / antenna combo that happened to have LEDs on the back for reporting RSSI and helping with alignment during CPE install. I finally got around to asking again for the make & model. It’s the Ubiquiti Powerstation 2. See picture of back below:
In addition to those nifty LEDs, this thing has got teh Linux running on it, heh, and Ubiquiti provides an SDK, toolchain, and all sorts of firmwarez–third party even. Now I have naughty thoughts. Naughty.
Buy one from Metrix for $159 right fucking now.
Thanks Ken!
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11 channels vs 14 channels vs … ZOMG!
By beetle | March 5, 2008
Johnny points out this bit of nifty news from the MadWifi Developers mailing list, regarding ath5k development, K / kugutsomen posts:
” 1/ Patched net/wireless/reg.c and added a DEBUG regulatory domain.
2/ Patched net/wireless/util.c to handle 2GHZ channels 15 to 26
correctly.
3/ Patched drivers/net/wireless/ath5k/base.c
a/ ath5k_ieee2mhz can now handle overlapping channels
b/ copy_channels can now handle channels -19 to 26 (2GHZ) & -16 to
220 (5GHZ)
4/ Patched drivers/net/wireless/ath5k/hw.c to set 5ghz_min to 4920 and
2ghz_min to 23125/ Patched iwconfig.c in wireless-tools to enable “iwconfig wlan0
channel N” to
work with negative channels and overlapping 5GHZ channels ( -16a to
26a).”
So available “channels” are then:
“-19,-18,-17,-16,-15,-14,-13,-12,-11,-10,-9,-8,-7,-6,-5,-4,-3,-2,-1,0,1,2,3,4,
5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,-16a,-15a,
-14a,-13a,-12a,-11a,-10a,-9a,-8a,-7a,-6a,-5a,-4a,-3a,-2a,-1a,0a,1a,2a,3a,
4a,5a,6a,7a,8a,9a,10a,11a,12a,13a,14a,15a,16a,17a,18a,19a,20a,21a,22a,
23a,24a,25a,26a,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,
44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61,62,63,64,65,66,
67,68,69,70,71,72,73,74,75,76,77,78,79,80,81,82,83,84,85,86,87,88,
89,90,91,92,93,94,95,96,97,98,99,100,101,102,103,104,105,106,107,
108,109,110,111,112,113,114,115,116,117,118,119,120,121,122,123,124,
125,126,127,128,129,130,131,132,133,134,135,136,137,138,139,140,141,
142,143,144,145,146,147,148,149,150,151,152,153,154,155,156,157,158,
159,160,161,162,163,164,165,166,167,168,169,170,171,172,173,174,175,
176,177,178,179,180,181,182,183,184,185,186,187,188,189,190,191,
192,193,194,195,196,197,198,199,200,201,202,203,204,205,206,207,
208,209,210,211,212,213,214,215,216,217,218,219,220″
4.9 GHz love, even. See the actual discussion thread HERE.
Check out ath5k Atheros driver stuffs HERE.
Thanks for the heads up, Johnny!
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RF eBooks 4 FREE! And WNDW 2 ed!
By beetle | February 29, 2008
A decent collection of free, downloadable eBooks on a bunch of RF topics is HERE. Doh. One of the broken links there happens to be for one of my favoritest RF-related books, “Wireless Networking in the Developing World”. No worries, it’s in second edition now (news to ME at least) and available as PDF HERE. Consider additional support by buying a printed copy HERE–only $13!
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$12 Aluminum Mesh = Miniature Faraday Cage!
By beetle | February 24, 2008
Three 12″ x 24″ sheets of Activa Activ-Wire Mesh for $12 total from Michael’s craft store and a couple hours of soldering later…
Conducts perfectly. w00t. Also threw down $8 for an extension cord and modded that into a clip-on ground wire. So $20. Yay. A little slicing and doorage to knock out, and this miniature Faraday cage is READY. Muahahahahahaaaa.
UPDATE: It doesn’t work! And I’m not sure why just yet. Either physics have gone awry on the East coast, or my house is not properly grounded. Either is a troubling thought. Troubleshooting to ensue.
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See-ya T-Mobile! Nice move, Starbucks.
By beetle | February 12, 2008
So, nearly five years ago, I stood in front of a couple thousand folks at DefCon, and while I was presenting ways to steal T-Mobile hotspot credentials, my big solution to such nefarious activity was pretty simple–just make Wi-Fi free, dammit.
Now it will be. Starbucks has kicked T-Mobile to the curb for AT&T as a hotspot provider. See HERE.
While this doesn’t solve hotspot security in toto, at least it takes one pwnage point away from Starbucks. Yay. Too bad customers had to wait five years for this.
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Nifty. Headphones. Blueteef. Small.
By beetle | December 20, 2007
Can’t remember if it was Pablos or another Seattle hacker luminary I was chatting with about Bluetooth stereo headphones awhile back, but at the time, I mentioned some kickass small ones, ideal for music-playing cell phones, with iTunes-interruption for incoming calls, and LED song / caller-ID readout, and magnetically clickable to each-other around your neck and… well, I couldn’t remember the name or model, so I seemed a bit loony at the time.
Okey dokey, I just ran across them on the tubes. Lubix. Multiple models.
iPod-white OR hacker-black w/ LED readout for $65
Hacker-black NO LED readout for $60
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WiFight != WhyFight, but whatever.
By beetle | December 19, 2007
Random blogger jacks the “WiFight” of this grand Club for a blog post, HERE, and opines on surfing via open APs as “theft” or not.
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Wait. $149 wireless chat handheld? I don’t get it.
By beetle | December 18, 2007
It’s not often you get clueless AND priceless in one press release.
“New Hand-Held, Wireless Instant Messaging Device First and Only To Offer Text-Messaging”
Uh. Ok. I suppose because it’s a Wi-Fi IM handheld that happens to have cellular capability to send SMS it’s “new” and “only”. I mean, shit, it’s OBVIOUSLY a major shift in fucking vision from cell phones that can use cellular networks for phone calls, SMS, … AND instant messaging. Oh. AND web browsing. Like the Sidekick. Or Blackjack. Or JasJar. Or OMG teh iPhone. The list goes on dammit.
But who wouldn’t want to spend $149 on an uber chat-brick? That looks oh so NOT hot:
I mean, $50 more probably gets you an actual PHONE (assuming you don’t score one for FREE). $150 more gets you an iPod Touch you can hack to do IM over Wi-Fi–if you’re SO freaked about monthly phone costs that $5 a month for unlimited SMS is so much harder to swallow than $20 unlimited cellular DATA. Either have web surfing capabilities and this little gidget doesn’t.
Someone fuzz this Zipit thing to death, pronto, since it unfortunately didn’t die at concept.
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