War driving
jargonhackingnetworking
Driving around with a wireless card, an antenna and a GPS, logging every access point you pass - mapping the radio landscape of a city. Named after war dialing by Peter Shipley, who did the first systematic survey around 1999 to 2000.
The findings were the argument: early surveys found most networks open or on WEP, which turned a theoretical weakness into a photograph of an entire city's exposure. Warchalking, briefly, marked open networks in chalk on pavements. The practice is legal in most places when it only listens, and it produced lasting public goods - the crowd-sourced access-point databases that phones now use to fix their position indoors are, in origin, war driving at planetary scale. DEF CON's wireless village still runs the sport version.
Also known as: wardriving, warwalking, warchalking, kismet, netstumbler