War Driving

War Driving With the technological advances in the way we transmit information over the past forty years have come new challenges for security experts. None of these challenges have been more complicated than that of securing information saved on a computer or a network of computers. It seems with every new security measure implemented to protect this information, there is someone who discovers a way of manipulating this new measure to gain access. One of the technological advances that have created a huge challenge for security specialists is the use of wireless internet connections. Wireless internet connections began in the 1970’s with the creation a wireless network in Hawaii called the ALOHANET, which connected seven computers on four separate islands (Goldsmith). Comparing this system to the ones we use today would show many advances in technology since the creation of the ALOHANET. Though this is the first recorded wireless network put in use, the idea of the World Wide Web began twenty years earlier with a group of scientists in the United States who saw a need for such a network (Goldsmith). With the invention of wireless transmission came the dangers of information being corrupted and/or intercepted by people who did not have permission to access such information and the battle to prevent such actions began. Today one of the dangers faced by anyone using a wireless connection without the correct security protocols is the act of war driving. War driving has a connection to war dialing which was seen in the 1980s movie, War Games. War dialing is a process of dialing all the telephone numbers in a certain area searching for those containing computer connections via a modem. As a research project, Peter Shipley showed the vulnerabilities in unprotected modems by war dialing phone numbers in the Bay Area of San Francisco in the late nineties (Poulsen). This war dialing experiment led to his discovery of many unprotected modems belonging to banks, hotels,