WiGLE: Wireless Network Mapping | Hacker News Reader

WiGLE: Wireless Network Mapping

wigle.net

114 pointspunnerud32 comments

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.

> 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

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?

> Does Wigle offer any sort of protections for the people collecting data?

So they can multitask while scoping out houses to burgle?

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

Is this three unconnected statements, or are you driving at a point?

>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!!)

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.

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

Thank you!!

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.

In-flight wifi being mapped, probably.

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.

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.)?

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.

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)

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.

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.

What do people do with the data from WiGLE wardriving?

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.

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

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) 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/

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…

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

Find funny WiFi names of course

Apartments by the university are always great -notyours -notthefbi -robopimps -prettyflyforawifi -MartyMcWiFi -DontStealMyWiFi

Also, I’ve discovered Neighbors have conversations with their SSIDs. DontLetYourDogPoopOnMyYard MyDogDoesntPoopOnYourYard

Also it’s fun to see someone still using WEP. You wonder if someone plugged it in a router c. 2000 and forgot about it. Or maybe it’s a honeypot.

Good question. When I used WiGLE few years ago , i wanted to know if there was 1. free wifi in my area, 2. possibility to find geo-location of router from bssid, and 3. if there was local community wifi network. Found out that there was not enough public data, so i went to wardriving with WiGLE (private). Answer was 1. No 2. WiGLE is not very precise 3. No.

Upload it to Wigle and flaunt your ranking to other war drivers :)

And demos. Get an audience, setup a PI with Kismet, show the audience their phones are permanently broadcasting ALL the SSIDs their phones have ever connected to, enjoy the stunned faces.

Pick one phone's list of SSIDs (make sure you agreed with the "victim" that this is ok) and map the list of SSIDs with Wigle to locations.

Why is the Ukraine empty?

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

They don't honor _nomap.

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