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" Memorize this: a5d1tmI#9DWSFX`/ksbo&amp;quot;RZ&amp;quot;l`SN`ito%b)Bel*B_EiCZ)q-h/ `VF&amp;quot;3Gb_CM#TT. Got it? You might want to try because that&amp;#039;s the kind of password you&amp;#039;ll need if you really want your wireless network to be secure. That&amp;#039;s the word from Keith Maynard--who goes by the name Seric--and he should know. Not only is he a longtime computer security guru--when he isn&amp;#039;t riding with the Vampire motorcycle club in Santa Cruz--Seric is one of the original wardrivers, hobbyists who deck out their cars with computers and sensitive antennas and go cruising the streets looking for wireless networks. Wardriving got some bad ink earlier this month when federal prosecutors announced indictments against an international ring of hackers who allegedly used the technique to find poorly secured networks at several East Coast restaurants and stores. Secret Service investigators said Aug. 5 the thieves downloaded more than 40 million credit card numbers from those networks, which they used or sold online, netting millions of dollars and a condo in Florida. But many wardrivers have nothing so nefarious in mind. Some just enjoy the Easter egg hunt of finding networks. Others, like Seric, use wardriving to draw attention to the scope of the emerging digital world. Their hope is that they can persuade people to think about their own wireless security by displaying the weakness they detect in articles, on panels and to professional clients. &amp;quot;Once you buy a tool, you need to learn how to use it correctly,&amp;quot; Seric said. Original wardrivers That was the idea that led Seric to join some of the earliest wardriving efforts with fellow enthusiasts from Berkeley&amp;#039;s Dis.Org Crew--DOC--a group of self-described amateur troublemakers and professional consultants. The crew&amp;#039;s Peter Shipley coined the term wardriving, which evolved from the term wardialing--finding open networks by randomly calling phone numbers with a modem--which itself came from the movie where the technique played a central role: &amp;quot;WarGames.&amp;quot; When the DOC started wardriving back in the early part of this millennium, wireless networks were difficult to find, but only about 15 percent of them, Seric said, featured any type of security. Wardriving eventually went mainstream, with Skyhook Wireless, the company behind the iPhone&amp;#039;s location tracking abilities. Founder Ted Morgan said he stumbled upon wardriving in 2002, and today the company maintains a fleet of 500 scanning vehicles in Europe, Asia and the United States, all collecting data that allow the iPhone to find its user&amp;#039;s location using the nearest Wi-Fi network as part of its mapping software. Wardriving faded a bit as the networks went from being hard to find to being hard to miss, although enthusiasts--some of whom have recorded more than a million networks--still upload new finds to sites such as WiGLE.net. But on Thursday, at the request of The Chronicle, Seric dusted off his wardriving rig and took a spin around the Bay Area to look for potential vulnerabilities like the ones exploited by the ring indicted Aug. 5. &amp;quot;I got like 135 (access points) off the freeway on my way up here from Santa Cruz,&amp;quot; said Seric, as he adjusted his equipment--laptop, Wi-Fi antenna, GPS antenna--in the parking lot of Stanford Shopping Center. After a five-hour cruise around the Bay Area--including residential and downtown sections of Palo Alto, San Francisco and Oakland before returning to Palo Alto across the Dumbarton Bridge--Seric&amp;#039;s list included more than 2,600 individual networks, spotted at businesses, in homes, on campuses and within moving buses. Open networks appeared every block or so, beaming from homes in West Oakland and near the Hewlett-Packard garage in Palo Alto, from Stanford University to Oakland&amp;#039;s Federal Building and San Francisco&amp;#039;s City Hall, along freeways, on tree-lined streets and in dusty industrial parks. That&amp;#039;s a crime? Overall, about one-third of the networks found during the tour showed no encryption, although some might have featured some other forms of protection not visible without a more intrusive--and possibly illegal--probe. Attempting to access the network to find out could cause Seric to cross from legal wardriving, where networks are passively detected and recorded, into the legally gray area of computer trespassing. That such a crime exists will come as disturbing news to the legions of iPhone and laptop users who have become accustomed to seizing the closest open network for their own use. But while legal experts say the law is murky, the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco has tracked a handful of cases where people have been successfully prosecuted for theft of service or computer trespassing for using open networks at libraries or cafes without permission. The sentences have included probation, suspended sentences and fines. But nobody, according to the EFF, has gone to trial, where a judge and jury could clarify the law.   RELATED STORIES * PLUS: As TSA Clears Laptops in Bags, Your Guide to Free Airport Wi-Fi  * MIT WEEK: &amp;#039;Drive-by Wi-Fi&amp;#039; Takes Third-World Web Access to the Road  * EARLIER: WiMAX Network&amp;#039;s Rollout Abroad Hints at Future of Connected US   Keith &amp;quot;Seric&amp;quot; Maynard, during a wardriving trip around the bay, scans an area for unsecured wireless networks. (Photograph by Kurt Rogers / The Chronicle) "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a12145/4278382/>