About
I’ve had wi-fi at home for years.
My first experience of wi-fi was an Apple Airport BaseStation and a graphite iBook SE 466. I bought it from MicroAnvika on Tottenham Court Road after a business trip to a client in London, around the end of 2000.
Amazing, I could surf wirelessly through my dial-up internet connection. The speeds were crap, but I was hooked. Every Mac after that had to have an Airport card.
Everything had to be wireless, even my Apple Newton. As speeds got faster, gear got updated. It became the norm, flip open the laptop and you’re online. I’d never seen anyone else’s network in range from my house, and it was rare that other businesses near me had it. It was out there, but not eponymous.
My interest in stumbling came about in the winter ’06. I was in Spain, staying at m mother-in-laws, who didn’t have an internet connection. When I flipped open my PowerBook I could see about 3 networks from the bedroom… Hmm. This is interesting. A walk through the apartment produced a lot more SSIDs. Time to learn more… KisMac was downloaded and I started scanning. I got over 20 SSIDs in as short walk through the apartment. More reading showed how people were logging the co-ordinates of the Access Points (APs) with GPS units (bought one as soon as I got back to the UK), set it all up and went for a drive.
I was hooked.
I’ve no idea what it is that is so appealing to me. Curiosity? Recognition of SSID names?
I am very surprised by the penetration of wi-fi though. Where I live, I wouldn’t have guessed there’d be even a fifth of the networks that I can see from a short drive.
One thing I do not use KisMac for is cracking. Not my scene. Stumbling is a completely non-intrusive hobby, purely just observing networks and logging positions.
So why this site?
Well, primarily, I’m a graphic/web designer, but I’ve always had an interest in the technical side of things, doing Art, Maths and Physics at A-Level. Being a designer, I use a Mac. KisMac is the best stumbler and network detection/penetration tesing app there is for us, but doesn’t support all the features of Kismet yet. So I’ve installed BackTrack through VMware on my MacBook Pro, but found mixed amounts of useful information online. I thought I’d help other users like myself, who are more graphically inclined to get started and answer regular questions.