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.

In this wonderful small world we live in now where we can constantly absord music at a staggering rate from an innumerable amount of places I have but one question to ask. How many people remember the band Picturehouse?

I have asked that question so many times to so any different people in the last 24 hours and usually the answer is that they have just a vague recollection. Well if thats the case with you guys out there maybe you need a good dose of “listen carefully”. Side effects may include learning something.

Around about 17 years ago, or so the legends would have us believe, a man called Dave Browne and a few friends went to England to find their fortunes. After signing with London Records thinking theyd be the next U2 their band didnt do that hot. They cut their losses and returned home to Ireland and started going at it for themselves and made a really big name for themselves all over the country. Unfortunately though international fame, though they deserved it, didnt come to them. Of course they were big in Germany apparently but I think theyd rather play that down a bit seeing as most germans still bop to David Hasslehoff.

Anyway after a while Dave decided he’d had enough fun for now and called it a night. Dave went on to join a group known as the Flash Gits (kick ass band name imho) and for a time spent his nights playing in Lillie’s Bordello in Dublin City.

Well now its solo time. Yes Dave of PH is now going solo. In fact he released an album just today. The title is the same as the post title above. Windows to the Soul. Now thats all well and good but why is a geek related website reporting this? Wheres the microchips and the cat6 cabling. Take another spoonful of “Listen carefully” and I’ll continue.

Now the album comes in a very stylish package. Cd? Forget cds. Direct download from a website ala Radiohead? Forget that nonsense. How can you get this album? You can get it on a credit card style usb memory device. All you do is twist a bit of it to get the connector pointing out, you stick it in your machine and there you go. Not only is the album on there but its also a 1.5 gig memory stick that you can then use for whatever you like. Little things like that are what make the world go round.

If you guys want anymore details on Dave Browne and his tours and albums and whatnot check out his website.

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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For many years now ive been using a version of Windows. My first computer may have been a commodore 64 followed by a macintosh but i never used those things properly. They were simply little boxes that sat there and looked at me with their buttons and switches. Nowadays I think back and tell myself “Its ok. You were an idiot back then and didnt know how fun computers can be”. Still feel ashamed for not paying them the level of respect they deserved.

But now that I know the joys of computing I can safely say that out of everything Ive tried so far… Windows operating systems are the number one system for all the masochistsout there. Thats why I decided to switch to a flavour of linux.

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Ok so i wasnt going to do this but Ive been thinking about the whole P2P thing all week since reading this article. Lets take a moment now and discuss a few of the finer points of P2P shall we?

Ok so we all know that yes people use P2P networks to pirate music, movies and software but its used for so much more. A lot of people use it to get free and open source content that would be otherwise inaccessible. One good example would be a copy of a Linux distribution. Fedora for example weighs in at well over 3 gigs in size. Wouldnt that be fun to download directly from a server? Wouldnt that be so much fun for the people paying to host said server? I mean how many people actually download this stuff right? It couldnt possibly raise bandwith costs that much could it?

Yes. Yes it can.

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Ok so everyone knows about the different CMS (Content Management Systems) that are out there in the wide open world of the interwebs. The main ones you might have heard of would be Wordpress (Hey this site is made using that one), Joomla, Drupal (personal thought: Its awful) and finally e107 (also awful IMHO).

We now have a new one to wow us all. Its called Diferior.

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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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image courtesy of Apple

Ology is a suffix denoting a field of study or academic discipline. Appleologists, as mentioned in Ars Technica, would therefore be people studying the field of Apple. Contrary to logic and belief, there are many who could fit this description.

As the buzz about Macworld 2008, Apple’s annual shindig, is building to a crescendo the air is full of speculation as to what new products will be announced. After all the iPhone was born a year ago. What will it be this year?

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