Wardriving is not nearly so exciting as it used to be, what with half the city blanketed in unsecured wi-fi, but the San Francisco Chronicle wanted to test it out anyway. It’s controversial, but only among technophobes; everyone else knows that having an unsecured network is like leaving your front door swinging on its hinge and you pay the consequences if you’re dumb enough to do so. And there certainly are people happy to provide you with consequences.
Anyhow, writer and security guy “Seric” set up his sniffing rig and went a-wardriving through Palo Alto, Oakland, and the city. He picked up more than 2600 networks and mapped all the info here, although it’s a bit difficult to navigate. Not that this hasn’t been done before, but when it becomes headline news that someone stole credit card numbers from unsecured networks, it’s worth showing people just how widespread the security laxity is. The networks are denser than ever, and still about a third unsecured.