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Author Topic: Google sniffed my WIFi's arse and then marked it's teritory!!  (Read 321 times)
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Stevie
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« on: April 23, 2011, 10:44:48 AM »

From another forum, i checked my own router and indeed it has been mapped.



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Apparently Google now know the location of your WiFi router, thanks to anyone passing by with a mobile device running Android:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/22/google_android_privacy_concerns/

This of course equates to Wardriving, something which I thought was illegal?

You can see if they've sniffed your router here:

http://samy.pl/androidmap/

« Last Edit: April 24, 2011, 12:31:12 AM by Thermalsig » Logged

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« Reply #1 on: April 23, 2011, 11:23:25 AM »

Yep, they have mine.

The MAC is broadcast anyway (hence the total waste of time turning off SSID Broadcast), so it's pretty much in the public domain.
« Last Edit: April 23, 2011, 11:25:49 AM by Wooster » Logged

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« Reply #2 on: April 23, 2011, 11:25:10 AM »

and mine
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« Reply #3 on: April 23, 2011, 11:35:53 AM »

It's not that accurate.


The shop across the road from me is listed, but the location is way off.
The actual location is marked in red.



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« Reply #4 on: April 23, 2011, 02:41:14 PM »

Same here, its giving the wrong street name and the wrong scope of house numbers

and the circle is about three times as big and covers two estates
« Last Edit: April 23, 2011, 02:44:39 PM by Hijpo » Logged

Kryten
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« Reply #5 on: April 23, 2011, 02:56:11 PM »

Yep, they have mine.

The MAC is broadcast anyway (hence the total waste of time turning off SSID Broadcast), so it's pretty much in the public domain.

I'm pretty much in the camp that closing your wireless network (as in, not broadcasting your SSID) is really no longer a real option when it comes to wireless security.

It's just my opinion but my contention is that "Closed" networks, MAC access control lists, and reduction in transmission power are all more "feel good" security rather than real security. All these various approaches are dated and mistakenly lead to overconfidence.

WPA2 is - again, IMHO - the only real option if you value wireless security.

When I'm out and about and need to set up wireless access for my customers I tell them not to worry about broadcasting the SSID and I set up WPA2 encryption. This will be more secure than a closed WEP encrypted network. Closing the network makes it very difficult for neighbouring networks to see which channels are free thus causing potential interference problems.

Another thing to consider is that a closed network is still broadcasting and therefore is detectable (regardless of whether it is broadcasting a SSID). If someone was determined to hack into your network, then not broadcasting the SSID and MAC address access control is not going to stop them.

WPA2 is virtually uncrackable (only really vunerable to a dictionary attack if a real word is used as a password) and therefore will stop the casual user and the determined hacker.

MAC addresses are sent unencrypted and therefore can be picked up and read by a determined hacker. Not only that, with many ethernet devices you can now very easily change the MAC address to a different one, so making it very easy to spoof the MAC address and fool a wireless base station into believing that you are an authenticated client.

Of course, if one is really worried, don't use wireless just use wires.

Kryten

PS - Yup, my router has also been mapped.
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« Reply #6 on: April 23, 2011, 04:47:17 PM »

If someone connected there laptop with a spoofed mac address to a hub, would that laptop then be able to recieve the packets broadcast from the hub?

Im only starting a network course and it says that NICs only accept packets broadcast from he hub if the MAC address in the packet matches its own, if it doesnt it drops the packet.
So if the spoofed MAC address matches the address of the recipient NIC would you be able to see the data being transmitted?
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« Reply #7 on: April 23, 2011, 05:11:14 PM »

If someone connected there laptop with a spoofed mac address to a hub, would that laptop then be able to recieve the packets broadcast from the hub?

Im only starting a network course and it says that NICs only accept packets broadcast from he hub if the MAC address in the packet matches its own, if it doesnt it drops the packet.
So if the spoofed MAC address matches the address of the recipient NIC would you be able to see the data being transmitted?

A Hub sends all traffic to all network devices, so if you set your NIC to promiscuous mode then it'll happily track all network activity between all nodes.  No MAC address chicanery required. Things get trickier with routers and switches.
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« Reply #8 on: April 23, 2011, 06:45:19 PM »

But of course, wardriving isn't illegal unless you make a connection to a wireless network in question.... (because then, scanning for wireless networks would be illegal)

I've not really had a problem, it only ties down an unknown wireless mac to a location which you can use to triangulate off :\
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« Reply #9 on: April 23, 2011, 10:49:18 PM »

Aren't the cells themselves sufficient for triangulation ? Why use individual private (yes I know that is open to interpretation) peoples home equipment ?

Anyhoo, Google sniffed my fart would be sensational !

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« Reply #10 on: April 24, 2011, 12:34:15 PM »

In London, yes... even near Reading is wasn't enough.

They increase the accuracy by working out where a wireless network is, seeing as their coverage area is much smaller, and can guestimate better on there. Course, this data will slowly obsolete by itself anyway... I mean, they'll have to continually map it to keep it accurate.
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« Reply #11 on: April 24, 2011, 10:06:40 PM »

Mines comes up in California.   laugh
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« Reply #12 on: April 24, 2011, 10:46:58 PM »

Oh, of course looking the Android updated version won't obsolete either... probably why they stopping doing the Streetview cars since they needed to update it more regularly.

I personally don't see the problem in mapping the routers though. It's legally no different than walking past a house and noticing it has a red front door.

The historic logging on user location though isn't on.
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« Reply #13 on: April 26, 2011, 10:45:12 AM »

I'm not putting in my mac address to that site. Then two people have the details!  flee
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« Reply #14 on: April 27, 2011, 10:27:34 AM »

This reminds me.

I did this survey 3 years ago to test tethering a GPS receiver to my laptop, then running Airmagnet while driving around the streets:



That just shows the channel data, but I could just as easily have shown Vendor, Security, SSID's, MAC addresses etc..

Lucky I was reminded too.
The GPS receiver has been lying in a drawer for ages and needs charged for a job I have coming up next week.
http://map.langdale.co.uk/estate-map/properties.aspx

They're reporting wireless connectivity issues in the Chalets, so I'm down there for a couple of days to try and sort it out.
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