iStumbler
Power up and sniff out all the wireless
networks within coo-ee.
Troubleshooting wireless networks is made easy
with the Netstumbler-inspired iStumbler.
The latest v.0.93 includes support for wi-fi, Bluetooth and Apple's new Bonjour multicast DNS (mDNS) technology. If you have a suitable GPS unit you can track the location of networks.
Just within a few meters of my house there are as many as five networks -- that's a lot of device channels that can stumble over each other. But iStumbler makes finding free channels a breeze. There is very little to configure -- just fire it up and scan away.
Using this tool I was able to identify that my neighbour was running an insecure network -- Telstra Bigpond technicians had installed it without switching on wireless security. He was not too impressed when I told him.
A nice function is the ability to launch a separate translucent monitoring window that sits on top of all other windows so you can continue to monitor a link while going about other work -- such as entering a blog entry like this.
The stumbler software that underpins wardriving has received a lot of undeserved negative publicity for being a hacker tool like a port scanner. But just like port scanners, stumblers are merely tools to diagnose networks. In this case, wireless networks that operate on the open, unregulated by government, short-range international scientific and medical (ISM) band at 2.4GHz.
An article from the faculty of law at the University of Colorado in Boulder argues that wardriving is not a crime and is "quite innocuous, legal, and can even be quite beneficial to society".
The latest v.0.93 includes support for wi-fi, Bluetooth and Apple's new Bonjour multicast DNS (mDNS) technology. If you have a suitable GPS unit you can track the location of networks.
Just within a few meters of my house there are as many as five networks -- that's a lot of device channels that can stumble over each other. But iStumbler makes finding free channels a breeze. There is very little to configure -- just fire it up and scan away.
Using this tool I was able to identify that my neighbour was running an insecure network -- Telstra Bigpond technicians had installed it without switching on wireless security. He was not too impressed when I told him.
A nice function is the ability to launch a separate translucent monitoring window that sits on top of all other windows so you can continue to monitor a link while going about other work -- such as entering a blog entry like this.
The stumbler software that underpins wardriving has received a lot of undeserved negative publicity for being a hacker tool like a port scanner. But just like port scanners, stumblers are merely tools to diagnose networks. In this case, wireless networks that operate on the open, unregulated by government, short-range international scientific and medical (ISM) band at 2.4GHz.
An article from the faculty of law at the University of Colorado in Boulder argues that wardriving is not a crime and is "quite innocuous, legal, and can even be quite beneficial to society".
Posted: Sun - April 24, 2005 at 11:13 PM
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Switxer (pron: switcher), n. - A convert to Mac OS X.
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Published On: Apr 25, 2005 05:03 PM
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Published On: Apr 25, 2005 05:03 PM