War Driving The Pentagon

from the security-anyone? dept

Mon, Nov 8th 2004 12:46pm — Mike Masnick

By this point, if you have anything to do with wireless networks, you should know how to secure a basic wireless access point. However, it looks like plenty of government agencies have no clue. A test around Washington DC found that many government agencies had open WiFi networks -- including at least one at the Pentagon. Now, there are a lot of misconceptions out there about open WiFi networks, but one place where there really probably should not be one so easily accessible is the Pentagon. It is entirely possible, however, that they set up a completely separate network for guests -- but somehow that seems unlikely. The article suggests that the problem is often because of government contractors, who (if anything) should be even more aware of the issue. Still, you have to hand it to someone for actually "war driving" at the Pentagon. Now, who's going to war chalk the place?

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auMoose Cowherda, 9 Nov 2004 @ 1:00am

pentagon wifi
a wifi ap can be 'open' & still not be a problem providing there is a firewall behind it & u use a vpn / ssh to get thru the fw.
on the other hand, its probably some idiot gop apointee ....
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Mike (profile), 9 Nov 2004 @ 4:47am

Re: pentagon wifi
Yes, as we've made clear repeatedly in the past. Just because a WiFi AP is open it doesn't mean it's a bad thing. However, somehow you get the idea that the Pentagon isn't the type of place that wants to let random visitors jump on a hotspot.
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Guest, 8 May 2011 @ 7:59am

Wardriving the Pentagon
Is it legal to war-drive the Pentagon or government buildings? Was it legal for you to identify unsecured networks at the Pentagon? Wouldn't this be viewed as a hacking attempt? If someone attempted to hack the Pentagon while War-Driving would this not be a federal offence?

I've seen street views of the White House and the Pentagon on Google Maps. They claim that they accidentally war-drove as they sampled the world. In fact they collected data which may have been hacked by the Chinese. Haven't they deliberately or, if you believe them, inadvertently violated federal law?
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