When wifi hardware becomes interesting ...

bb_matt

Executive Member
Joined
Mar 26, 2004
Messages
5,616
Reaction score
7
Location
Hampshire, UK
Ok, no secret I'm now in London looking for work - yada yada.

Anyhoo, got myself a decent Acer laptop complete with an Intel wifi card - AND ...

Suddenly, I realise that what was supplied with this laptop really isn't that good at all. It reminds me of the reasonable onboard VGA or audio that you get with desktop motherboards, which you overide with better quality plug-in cards.

So, here I am, surrounded by private networks, none of which I can access even through Linux (and various software) because the wireless network card in my laptop is inferior.

I welcome myself to the world of wireless - suddenly it all becomes far more interesting.

Here, down the pub, I can see two networks (aside from the commercial one I'm currently surfing through) - Bolland and one called WLAN.
Back at the B&B, 1 mile up the road, I can see Humprie-net, Pornstarnet and a generic 3Comm-net.

No, don't get me wrong, I don't really want to gain access via them, honest ...

Well, I do, of course, but I realise the hardware I have is all wrong. Airsnort doesn't work with it and nor does the puny windows cr@p that's available.

To truly protect or hack wireless, microshaft is NOT the way to go ...

Kinda reminds me of winmodems.
 
Of course you are running Kismet but you do not have a Senao SL2511 EXT2+ Wireless LAN card with an an external 5dB Omni-antenne, prowling the airwaves of London.

Maybe you have time to read some of these interesting articles
How the Feds cracked 128 bit WEP in 3 minutes (weak key protocol):)
http://www.tomsnetworking.com/Sections-article111-page1.php

These following articles are really good reading on Cracking the WEP key
Part 1 - http://www.tomsnetworking.com/Sections-print-article118.php
Part 2 - http://www.tomsnetworking.com/Sections-article120.php
Part 3 - http://www.tomsnetworking.com/Sections-print-article124.php

These pages are in ideally for printing and make good coffee table reading.

If you do not want to dual boot your PC go and download burn
this iso to CD (bootable) , boots Knoppix, just save your Kismet logs to a flash disk otherwise when you reboot your notebook you will loose what was in the ramdisk of Knoppix, no need to re-partion your drive.
Now connect that to a Garmin eTrex GPS via the serial cable
and overly that with the gpsmap on top of a Googly Earth saved image, jotting down the lattitude and longitudes of your war drive
The Auditor Security Collection can be downloaded from
http://new.remote-exploit.org/index.php/Auditor_mirrors (650 Mb)
 
Last edited:
Thanks guys - very frustrating seeing open networks and not having access :D

Sitting in a free wireless zone again - hunting those down over time :)

It's a whole different world out there.

Of course, another project of mine is to hook up a decent laptop camera to my laptop and film the underground for a Quake4 level I want to build, or alternatively, go on the hidden underground tour with a good little video cam and film that, then build it in Quake4.

G0d, I'm sure an incurable geek.

kilos - have bookmarked this thread - good info there. I did download a swedish mini cd distro which had airsnort, but I didn't have the foggiest idea how to use it, probably this crappy intel wifi card isn't compatible.
 
bb_matt, just check with the underground officials first before filming...I know flash photography is explicitly banned and will land you in hot water. I seem to remeber something about video cameras also...not sure on this..best to ask first before you get shot by police thinking you are a terrorist.
 
Karnaugh said:
Intel wireless stuff is a bit cracker. Just grab a Senao PCMCIA card from somewhere.

The intel 2915abg in my laptop is quite honestly the best card I have seen in any laptop......... then again maybe its IBM's good antenna design ;)
 
All Intel cards are crap. No specs, no open support. Then again, this goes for most card manufacturers If you're going to buy something get a PCMCIA card by Senao, which is (hopefull) an Atheros based chip. Madwifi is currently the most mature of the open projects, aside from the original Prism stuff.
 
Whoop. ipw2200? Missed that one... The Madwifi's HAL is closed, but there is an open HAL now :)
 
yip, the intel guys opened up a project, as stated ipw2200.sf
bb_matt, what Acer is it, and what card comes with it, I got an acer travelmate 8103, which comes with a really nice wifi card, its a 2915abg (YIP, a/b/g networks!!!), also supports monitor mode. u can open up a panel on the bottom of the laptop, and change the minipci card, but y bother when its already got an external antenna connector on it!!!
Linux support under ipw2200 is quite good since late last year, worked great with 2.6.12, but the ieee80211 in 2.6.13 is causing me headaches!!
Overall, contrary to what many say, the ipw2200 support has become decent in linux (a whole lot better than my orinoco)
If you're acer is similiar to mine, linux runs great on it, but needs several hours of kernel and dsdt hacking, but once its up, its great, even the little blinky light thing for my wifi card is supported by ipw2200.

I think the most probable explanation you having is that the networks u connecting are probably filtering you out.

the only downside is airsnort doesn't have capablilities to use the card
Kismet works, using source ipw2200,ethx,ATHEROS
 
Dorris use ipw2915 instead of ipw2200 and kismet will scan the 5.8ghz spectrum aswell ;)
 
TheRoDent said:
All Intel cards are crap. No specs, no open support. Then again, this goes for most card manufacturers If you're going to buy something get a PCMCIA card by Senao, which is (hopefull) an Atheros based chip. Madwifi is currently the most mature of the open projects, aside from the original Prism stuff.

Yeah - been reading up today.

Went out and got a Linksys USB network gizmo, big waste of time - even worse than my built in laptop one - taking it back tommorrow. Was tempted to try a pringles can trick on it, but frankly, it's performance was so inferior, I decided not to waste more money ;)

Been looking at the Orinoco cards - Orinoco silver, with great range.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=orinoco+silver&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

Just need to find a place to buy one !

Werner, yeah, I think your right - the coppers are obviously fairly trigger happy regarding the underground. I was going to just conceal the camera in my laptop bag, with the zip slightly open and the camera peeking out - IOW, kind like random filming footage :D
 
Orinoco Cards are insanely expensive.
If you have a laptop, and you're not afraid to open it up :)

Get yourself an Atheros based Mini-PCI card, and replace the current Wireless card with it.
I did it to my laptop (IPW2100 was in the only mini-pci slot.. so I just popped it out and put the new one in)
We even did it to another laptop and fitted a proper SMA connector to the outside so we could plug in other antennas for wardriving.

Uniterm Direct sells the Wistron Neweb CM9 (802.11a/b/g, thats 2.4Ghz and 5.8Ghz) and they're not too expensive either.

www.dbg.co.za
 
orinoco silver cards are about £20 on ebay, not expensive..

bb_matt, I got a mini-pci rt2560f wlan card here that works with kismet using the rt2500 native driver, pm me...
 
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X