Tagebuch eines Technikers

Friday, September 5, 2008

Wardriving with my new cell

I recently obtained a Nokia N95 8GB. Besides some other things, it includes WLAN and GPS. This makes the cell a nice platform for wardriving, I thought.

And indeed, it does. After some research, I found the application PyNetMoney. It is written in Python and can be used with Nokia's open source project Python for S60. The installation was quite a pain, since I had to sign every packet I needed by myself. Besides this annoyance, I could successfully install the application. I found a manual on how to avoid signing issues (in German) later on.

I tested the application on two consecutive days. On the first day, I started the application in Graz, Austria, when I went from Dietrichsteinpark to Parkhouse with a friend. During this walk, I kept the cell's slider open and held the cell in my hand. According to the phone's manual, this is the preferred way if you are using GPS services.
On the second day, I started the application while taking a walk with my girlfriend. This time, I kept the cell in a pocket of my jacket, with the slider closed and bottom up -- I figured that I will get a better GPS connection this way, since the GPS receiver is on the bottom of the phone. I don't know if this is correct though.

I exported the results in KML format. They can be imported in Google Earth by using the File > Open from the menu. By checking the appropriate boxes, they can be viewed in the map. I suggest to activate street names as well, because the satellite resolution in this region of Austria is pretty bad, you won't recognize anything if you are not very familiar with the region.

I am pretty amazed of the accuracy of the results. Of some of the WLANs found, I either know the exact location or can give a good estimation of it. Using this information as a criteria, the resulting coordinates seem to be quite accurate, just off by a few meters. When I'll be eating my next Kebap in Graz, I'm pretty shure I'll be able to access the Internet over an open WLAN.

Meanwhile, I'll continue to gather more data on open WLANs in my surroundings. If you are interested in this data (mainly of the upper parts of Styria and Graz), just give me a shout.