7 ms·

WiGLE: Wireless Network Mapping

114 points by punnerud 4y ago

ajsnigrutin 4y ago
What are some good wifi cards for "wardriving" nowadays? Something USB, with atleast AC standard (2.4 and 5ghz support), and with a good linux support (monitor mode, etc.)?
- viraptor 4y ago
  Isn't pretty much everything supported these days? I haven't run into any recent laptop that isn't ac or without monitor mode available.
  - ajsnigrutin 4y ago
    External wifi cards are horrible nowadays... rtl8821XX sucks, barely works as a client mode.. mediatek somewhat works, and I didn't try the others (yet)
- WelcomeShorty 4y ago
  What I do is get a couple of Androids (preferably different versions, not even necessary different vendors. The difference / efficiency in WiFi & GPS implementations are enormous.), install Wiggle and off you go. No messing with GPSD, no tuning, absolutely nothing just supply power and you are ready to rock. Additional benefit: you also detect cell towers & bluetooth if you wish to do so. For extra good results, drive... slow... I use a scooter that allows me to comfortably drive 20km/h (15 in Freedoms) with a plastic case on the back with a handful of phones and can easily get about 80 / 90% of the SSIDs. I VERY seldomly wiggle, am in the 600 - 700 range.
  - ajsnigrutin 4y ago
    The problem with androids is, that you don't get monitor mode (no packet capture, no hidden networks, no number of clients, etc. you get with kismet), and that a single scan (2.4+5g) lasts multiple seconds, compared to a laptop with 4 usb dongles, where 1 can hope just between channels 1, 6 and 11 (where the most APs are), and the other three are used for the other.
papandada 4y ago
Since discovering this (but it's not at all new) a few weeks back thanks to an HN comment, it's mainly gamified walking in residential areas for me.
- JeremyNT 4y ago
  Oh boy, if you want to take this to another (arguably more useful) level, you should check out StreetComplete[0]. It gamifies filling in data in OpenStreetMaps: [0] https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete
  - papandada 4y ago
    Thank you!!
hyperific 4y ago
What do people do with the data from WiGLE wardriving?
- noasaservice 4y ago
  If I know the said or bssid, I can find where you live/work. It's also an alternate way of doing location using GPS+wifi without doing what Google did and uses.
- cpeterso 4y ago
  I don't know what WiGLE users do with the data, but I read the WiGLE admins sold Wi-Fi location data to Microsoft to bootstrap Bing Maps back in the day: https://wigle.net/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=586 https://wigle.net/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=586 I helped bootstrap Mozilla's Location Service (MLS) to support geolocation on Firefox OS without Google Location Services. Mozilla even had its own Wi-Fi "wardriving/stumbling" app (MozStumbler https://github.com/mozilla/MozStumbler https://github.com/mozilla/MozStumbler) and an opt-in stumbler in Firefox Android. But after Firefox OS was retired, Mozilla didn't have have a need for MLS. That said, Mozilla still runs a Wi-Fi geolocation service open to other projects (like GNOME's Geoclue service). Mozilla also publishes cell tower location data and shares with the OpenCellID project. I worked with Mozilla's privacy and security teams to see if we could publish the Wi-Fi location data, but we didn't find a practical, privacy-preserving way to do that. For more information about MLS (including a zoomable world map of the Wi-Fi location coverage), check out https://location.services.mozilla.com/ https://location.services.mozilla.com/
- tsujamin 4y ago
  In red teaming: it’s helpful for identifying client sites based on repeating ESSIDs at different locations or ESSIDs being broadcast by the same BSSID manufacturer or controller. Saves me a drive around town sometimes. Not sure how useful that is to everyone else though…
- hoherd 4y ago
  I scraped a ton of Nintendo 3DS street pass relays from all over the world and used some homebrew code[1] on a pi to rotate to a new item in the list once every few minutes, which provided me an endless amount of street pass game data. Nintendo shut the relay servers down in early 2018 though, effectively killing the homepass community, so that's all in the past now. Too bad because my kids are sitting right here playing 3DS and they can only streetpass with each other. [1] https://github.com/danielhoherd/homepass https://github.com/danielhoherd/homepass
milsorgen 4y ago
My first WiGLE upload was in 2013. I like collecting the data about my local areas, if big tech and the government can why can't I? I also upload and click allow for commerical use. I believe this data ends up in OpenStreetMap? It's been a while. I'm primarily interested in interacting with the data programmatically to see if I can suss out anything "interesting". The addition of Bluetooth was a major boon to that aspect, interesting to see what devices change over time in particular locations or if certain devices show up in multiple areas. Things like that. I'm a hobbyist programmer so actually having data to interact with his nice. But probably one of the most unintended benefits I get from WiGLE is in exercise, it encourages me to go down different roads when I run or to take a right instead of a left when walking and listening to podcasts or to go that extra step to push a little further. I'm a big fan of this application and it's the only one that has followed me to all my different devices over the years. Edit: I should also point out that I originally found WiGLE to scan and keep track of open or 'openable' WiFi networks. I still remember when one could rather reliably count on finding an open network if they were willing to look a little.
- KennyBlanken 4y ago
  > I like collecting the data about my local areas, if big tech and the government can why can't I? According to another commenter, Wigle project sold their data to Microsoft: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33210603 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33210603 Also: because you're helping private and public investigators help track others? And providing a log of everywhere you've been? Your "stumble" log is a breadcrumb trail. I don't get the point of these services or participation in them. Does Wigle offer any sort of protections for the people collecting data?
  - UncleEntity 4y ago
    > Does Wigle offer any sort of protections for the people collecting data? So they can multitask while scoping out houses to burgle?
runjake 4y ago
This was such a great site. It’s probably better in metro areas but these days it’s woefully out of date in smaller cities (eg the nearby town of ~300k is super hit and miss for my red team ops.) Fortunately, Apple’s geolocation API is highly useful and super up-to-date, albeit a mess of undocumented APIs. I have a hacked up Python script that I am utterly unable to get running on anything other than the original Linux VM it was developed on. I only wish it dumped elevation so I could narrow down apartment locations better.
nosmokewhereiam 4y ago
Netstumbler forums: amish_something gave me a harsh lesson on using the search function. I stumbled the USAF dorms near NW Texas and got a very verbal warning not to send active probes to get routers to beacon out of cycle. Advice: kismet for passive listening and an Orinoco wLAN chipset. I'd assumed truckers and pilots would get the most Wiggle points.
- bcraven 4y ago
  Is this three unconnected statements, or are you driving at a point?
- dontbenebby 4y ago
  >I stumbled the USAF dorms near NW Texas and got a very verbal warning Wait, did you just... drive up to the dorms? Did you get pulled over by an MP or something? I'm not in the military, but I've definitely at least once had to give someone a warning to get off my personal wifi. (I'm not a communist... get your own!!)
siraben 4y ago
If you zoom out in the map there seems to be Wi-Fi networks in the shape of flight paths over the ocean and in sparsely populated areas.
- LeoPanthera 4y ago
  In-flight wifi being mapped, probably.
  - papandada 4y ago
    Which makes a bit of interesting observation about what the map is actually showing. Mostly density of wifi networks for this subset of users but partly their movement patterns too.
ShakataGaNai 4y ago
Oh man.... Wigle is something I haven't thought about in a very long time. Was quite active between 2005 and 2010ish. It was so cool to drive around my local city and submit data to see dots on the map where there weren't any previously. Even had a netbook (remember those terrible things?) running linux with a couple antenna in the back of my motorcycle for a while. But it's clear that the data isn't being collected very much any more. Apparently I have enough "points" from way back in the day that I'm still reasonably highly ranked. Also looked up my SSID and the dots are at my old home, when I moved over 3 years ago.
- hnlmorg 4y ago
  > Even had a netbook (remember those terrible things?) My recollection of Netbooks were how awesome those things were. They were a really transformative form-factor for the time. Even if their relevance was short lived.
- torpid 4y ago
  I had a kickass wardriving rig back in the day. A dedicated netbook with kismet, gpsd, and a kismet script i hacked together before they had a plugin framework that would alert me on certain ssid probes, which would reliably tell me of the presence of police MCTs thus police cars (the mcts used motorola airmobile iirc). Was also really fun compiling stats knowing how often police would drive past my house, and knowing which vehicles they were.
TobTobXX 4y ago
Why is the Ukraine empty?
- Namidairo 4y ago
  Presumably they don't want be responsible for the lives of any consumer drone operators that accidentally get their location uploaded.
Fnoord 4y ago
They don't honor _nomap.

114 points by punnerud 4y ago

What are some good wifi cards for "wardriving" nowadays? Something USB, with atleast AC standard (2.4 and 5ghz support), and with a good linux support (monitor mode, etc.)?

viraptor 4y ago
Isn't pretty much everything supported these days? I haven't run into any recent laptop that isn't ac or without monitor mode available.
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago
  External wifi cards are horrible nowadays... rtl8821XX sucks, barely works as a client mode.. mediatek somewhat works, and I didn't try the others (yet)
WelcomeShorty 4y ago
What I do is get a couple of Androids (preferably different versions, not even necessary different vendors. The difference / efficiency in WiFi & GPS implementations are enormous.), install Wiggle and off you go. No messing with GPSD, no tuning, absolutely nothing just supply power and you are ready to rock. Additional benefit: you also detect cell towers & bluetooth if you wish to do so. For extra good results, drive... slow... I use a scooter that allows me to comfortably drive 20km/h (15 in Freedoms) with a plastic case on the back with a handful of phones and can easily get about 80 / 90% of the SSIDs. I VERY seldomly wiggle, am in the 600 - 700 range.
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago
  The problem with androids is, that you don't get monitor mode (no packet capture, no hidden networks, no number of clients, etc. you get with kismet), and that a single scan (2.4+5g) lasts multiple seconds, compared to a laptop with 4 usb dongles, where 1 can hope just between channels 1, 6 and 11 (where the most APs are), and the other three are used for the other.

papandada 4y ago

Since discovering this (but it's not at all new) a few weeks back thanks to an HN comment, it's mainly gamified walking in residential areas for me.

JeremyNT 4y ago
Oh boy, if you want to take this to another (arguably more useful) level, you should check out StreetComplete[0]. It gamifies filling in data in OpenStreetMaps: [0] https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete
- papandada 4y ago
  Thank you!!

hyperific 4y ago

What do people do with the data from WiGLE wardriving?

noasaservice 4y ago
If I know the said or bssid, I can find where you live/work. It's also an alternate way of doing location using GPS+wifi without doing what Google did and uses.
cpeterso 4y ago
I don't know what WiGLE users do with the data, but I read the WiGLE admins sold Wi-Fi location data to Microsoft to bootstrap Bing Maps back in the day: https://wigle.net/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=586 https://wigle.net/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=586 I helped bootstrap Mozilla's Location Service (MLS) to support geolocation on Firefox OS without Google Location Services. Mozilla even had its own Wi-Fi "wardriving/stumbling" app (MozStumbler https://github.com/mozilla/MozStumbler https://github.com/mozilla/MozStumbler) and an opt-in stumbler in Firefox Android. But after Firefox OS was retired, Mozilla didn't have have a need for MLS. That said, Mozilla still runs a Wi-Fi geolocation service open to other projects (like GNOME's Geoclue service). Mozilla also publishes cell tower location data and shares with the OpenCellID project. I worked with Mozilla's privacy and security teams to see if we could publish the Wi-Fi location data, but we didn't find a practical, privacy-preserving way to do that. For more information about MLS (including a zoomable world map of the Wi-Fi location coverage), check out https://location.services.mozilla.com/ https://location.services.mozilla.com/
tsujamin 4y ago
In red teaming: it’s helpful for identifying client sites based on repeating ESSIDs at different locations or ESSIDs being broadcast by the same BSSID manufacturer or controller. Saves me a drive around town sometimes. Not sure how useful that is to everyone else though…
hoherd 4y ago
I scraped a ton of Nintendo 3DS street pass relays from all over the world and used some homebrew code[1] on a pi to rotate to a new item in the list once every few minutes, which provided me an endless amount of street pass game data. Nintendo shut the relay servers down in early 2018 though, effectively killing the homepass community, so that's all in the past now. Too bad because my kids are sitting right here playing 3DS and they can only streetpass with each other. [1] https://github.com/danielhoherd/homepass https://github.com/danielhoherd/homepass

milsorgen 4y ago

My first WiGLE upload was in 2013. I like collecting the data about my local areas, if big tech and the government can why can't I? I also upload and click allow for commerical use. I believe this data ends up in OpenStreetMap? It's been a while. I'm primarily interested in interacting with the data programmatically to see if I can suss out anything "interesting". The addition of Bluetooth was a major boon to that aspect, interesting to see what devices change over time in particular locations or if certain devices show up in multiple areas. Things like that. I'm a hobbyist programmer so actually having data to interact with his nice. But probably one of the most unintended benefits I get from WiGLE is in exercise, it encourages me to go down different roads when I run or to take a right instead of a left when walking and listening to podcasts or to go that extra step to push a little further. I'm a big fan of this application and it's the only one that has followed me to all my different devices over the years. Edit: I should also point out that I originally found WiGLE to scan and keep track of open or 'openable' WiFi networks. I still remember when one could rather reliably count on finding an open network if they were willing to look a little.

KennyBlanken 4y ago
> I like collecting the data about my local areas, if big tech and the government can why can't I? According to another commenter, Wigle project sold their data to Microsoft: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33210603 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33210603 Also: because you're helping private and public investigators help track others? And providing a log of everywhere you've been? Your "stumble" log is a breadcrumb trail. I don't get the point of these services or participation in them. Does Wigle offer any sort of protections for the people collecting data?
- UncleEntity 4y ago
  > Does Wigle offer any sort of protections for the people collecting data? So they can multitask while scoping out houses to burgle?

runjake 4y ago

This was such a great site. It’s probably better in metro areas but these days it’s woefully out of date in smaller cities (eg the nearby town of ~300k is super hit and miss for my red team ops.) Fortunately, Apple’s geolocation API is highly useful and super up-to-date, albeit a mess of undocumented APIs. I have a hacked up Python script that I am utterly unable to get running on anything other than the original Linux VM it was developed on. I only wish it dumped elevation so I could narrow down apartment locations better.

nosmokewhereiam 4y ago

Netstumbler forums: amish_something gave me a harsh lesson on using the search function. I stumbled the USAF dorms near NW Texas and got a very verbal warning not to send active probes to get routers to beacon out of cycle. Advice: kismet for passive listening and an Orinoco wLAN chipset. I'd assumed truckers and pilots would get the most Wiggle points.

bcraven 4y ago
Is this three unconnected statements, or are you driving at a point?
dontbenebby 4y ago
>I stumbled the USAF dorms near NW Texas and got a very verbal warning Wait, did you just... drive up to the dorms? Did you get pulled over by an MP or something? I'm not in the military, but I've definitely at least once had to give someone a warning to get off my personal wifi. (I'm not a communist... get your own!!)

siraben 4y ago

If you zoom out in the map there seems to be Wi-Fi networks in the shape of flight paths over the ocean and in sparsely populated areas.

LeoPanthera 4y ago
In-flight wifi being mapped, probably.
- papandada 4y ago
  Which makes a bit of interesting observation about what the map is actually showing. Mostly density of wifi networks for this subset of users but partly their movement patterns too.

ShakataGaNai 4y ago

Oh man.... Wigle is something I haven't thought about in a very long time. Was quite active between 2005 and 2010ish. It was so cool to drive around my local city and submit data to see dots on the map where there weren't any previously. Even had a netbook (remember those terrible things?) running linux with a couple antenna in the back of my motorcycle for a while. But it's clear that the data isn't being collected very much any more. Apparently I have enough "points" from way back in the day that I'm still reasonably highly ranked. Also looked up my SSID and the dots are at my old home, when I moved over 3 years ago.

hnlmorg 4y ago
> Even had a netbook (remember those terrible things?) My recollection of Netbooks were how awesome those things were. They were a really transformative form-factor for the time. Even if their relevance was short lived.
torpid 4y ago
I had a kickass wardriving rig back in the day. A dedicated netbook with kismet, gpsd, and a kismet script i hacked together before they had a plugin framework that would alert me on certain ssid probes, which would reliably tell me of the presence of police MCTs thus police cars (the mcts used motorola airmobile iirc). Was also really fun compiling stats knowing how often police would drive past my house, and knowing which vehicles they were.

TobTobXX 4y ago

Why is the Ukraine empty?

Namidairo 4y ago
Presumably they don't want be responsible for the lives of any consumer drone operators that accidentally get their location uploaded.

Fnoord 4y ago

They don't honor _nomap.