Tools:

• Ubiquity 300Mw Cardbus Express
• Freedom Keychain GPS
• Backtrack 3 live cd
• kismetearth
• Bluetooth Dongle
• Laptop

These are the tools I used, I bought most of them from ebay, and I know them to work extremely well. However, there are alot of other configurations that will also work equally well. Many laptops’ internal wireless card will suffice, I use the ubiquity card because it has off-the-shelf support in 99% of linux distros and has a high sensitivity. your mileage may vary.

Chances are, if your wireless card is detected and supported in Backtrack, your good to go.

The gps I picked is extremely useful, its small and very easy to use, but you can use any number of other gps devices. I wont attempt to suggest how to begin using every gps device, you’ll have to figure that out yourself.

Introduction:

Wardriving is the wifi equivilent of chartography. There are many other names, warwalking, warcycling, war-whatever, with the exception of warchalking which is often illegal due to the use of chalk on private property. Wikipedia defines wardriving as:

Wardriving is the act of searching for Wi-Fi wireless networks by a person in a moving vehicle, using a portable computer or PDA.

One might reasonably ask why you would go out of your way to search, then log, the wireless networks in a given area. There are many reasons actually, more than I care to list, but heres a couple:

• Purely for the fun and joy of it
• To know where open and/or free access points are located, and where they are and/or are not accessible from (ie: deadzones)
• When creating a wireless network, it is often necessary to know the operating frequency, strength and/or location of other networks in the area so that signals do not interfere with each other and cause degraded performance. wardriving is very effective in this area.
• Statistical research on wireless security and the like

Naturally with anything not so well understood, often it may come to pass that people will claim this activity is illegal, in any case. I am no lawyer and make no claims that what I say here is to be considered legal council, saying that however… when you understand the technology its hard to make that argument stick.

The Basics:

Wireless access points, as part of their very function, broadcast information about themselves such that you know their name (ssid), channel (frequency) and encryption requirements (does it require a password?). This is no more than a house having its address printed outside; and detailing this information - at least in my view, is nothing more than capturing public information - willingly given by the owners. Bear in mind after all, access points can almost always be told to be in an ‘isolation’ mode where it does not broadcast these details if it so wishes. So its a choice to make this information available to the public.

In the next article I will discuss how to connect your gps, configure kismet, and get started wardriving.

Once again Windows Vista has been the target of the hackers and crackers and just generally fun loving people with very little time on their hands.

Using a linux distro called BackTrack (BackTrack is the most Top rated linux live distribution focused on penetration testing) a person can gain system level access to any machine running windows Vista by following a couple of simple steps.

All you need to do is navigate to the windows directory of the machine and into the system32 folder. You then make a backup of the utility manager (utilman.exe) which is used to run the various utilities that allow people with sight problems to access a computer (screen readers etc..).

When this is backed up you rename cmd.exe to utilman.exe and reboot. When you boot up windows then and you reach the log in screen you can get the option to use the utility manager by pressing ctrl+u. Since utilman.exe is now basically cmd.exe you get a command prompt which you can now use to run explorer and thus gain system access without having to know any usernames or passwords.

This exploit apparently only works on Windows Vista and does not affect XP, 2000, 2003 and NT.

Here is a video that shows how to do it.

I wonder how long it will be before Microsoft fixes this issue.

Today we take a look at Three’s mobile broadband offering, which is offered in direct competition with both O2’s and Vodafone’s  mobile broadband services.

Three differentiate themselves from the pack right off the mark by offering both a prepay (dubbed threepay…urgh) and a subscription based service (for which im sure the marketing department were sorely disapointed, since they couldnt figure out how to inject the brand name into another already existing, perfectly usable word) which runs at approximately €25 per month and €20 per month respectively. Though it should be noted the prepay can only be topped up in increments of €10 - so you could easily find yourself with a misterious €5 credit that always just seems to hang around every second month or so. lovely.

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You’ve just download the latest and greatest version of Ubuntu Linux and it didn’t cost you a thing. You breezed through the installation and a brand new desktop is staring you in the face — now what?

There are a few things you’ll need to do if you want to get the most out of your Linux desktop. But don’t worry, none of this is too complicated. In fact, it’s much easier than trying to do the same on Windows or a Mac.

The first thing to do is open up the Add/Remove Programs application (Click on Applications > Add/Remove…). This is a simple manager for installing and uninstalling software on your Ubuntu system. There are literally hundreds of free goodies at your disposal here — Start with this list of essentials.

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Use Windows long enough and you’ll recognize that bloated, sinking feeling creeping in. Spyware and viruses pile up, registries get corrupted, drivers stop working or cause conflicts — eventually reaching that point where you want to just erase everything and re-install the entire system. After swearing to pay more attention to the links you follow and the software you install, you find yourself staring at a brand-new-all-over-again Windows desktop.

Your system is fresh and untarnished. Now what? Time to tweak it to your satisfaction!

Start by running Windows Update to make sure you’re up to date with all the patches and security updates and then follow our handy guide to get the most out of Windows.

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So right now the boys over at bittorrent.org are working on ways to bypass the filtering set up by Comcast. The socalled Sandvine stuff that they use that is. Now this is going to be a very tough thing for them to get done but if they succeed then things could get very interesting.

Personally I believe that theyre right to try and bypass these security measures. I think they should because I dont wanna wait longer than i have to to download the several gigs that makes up the latest Fedora Build. I salute their vigilence and their dedication to the ways of bittorrent. Now read on for details on their plans.

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These days, nothing worries an internet service provider more than peer-to-peer file trading. Depending on where you live, P2P can account for between 50 and 75% of broadband internet traffic. We mostly have the popularity of BitTorrent to thank for this crazy amount of data going to and fro.

This amount of traffic can raise the ISPs daily costs of delivering service, cause congestion either in your neighborhood or on the ISP’s network, and force the ISP to buy increased bandwidth capacity.

But if you’ve been paying close attention to your BitTorrent transfers lately (or if you’ve simply been reading the news) you’ll notice that ISPs have begun to take drastic measures to slow that flood of data currently clogging up their pipes.

Even though many of them deny it, most ISPs actively engage in traffic shaping, bandwidth throttling, connection denial or some such tactic to keep the amount of bandwidth consumed by high traffic applications on their networks to a minimum. While this does often ensure better performance for everyone in the neighborhood, it can mean painfully slow transfer speeds for those dabbling in P2P — legit or not.

While there are valid arguments for and against shaping, we’re not here to debate. We just want the fastest BitTorrent transfers possible.

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Arguably the best video codec available is DivX, providing much better quality than DVD and a size in an order of magnitude smaller filesize. It’s the perfect format for video on the web. Unfortunately the Apple iPod does not support the DivX video codec, which presents a problem if you want to view downloaded movies or trailers on your iPod. The iPod may not even have the horsepower to play DivX.

In this article, I’ll explain how to you can easily convert your video files into a format that Apples’ ipod video will readily accept…

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