War Driving is the practice of driving through an area with a laptop equipped with a WiFi NIC and making note of where WiFi contact is made. War driving is not strictly illegal, in fact most who take part in it do it for fun. However, accessing a network that one does not have permission to access is illegal.

The practice of driving around with a GPS, laptop equipped with WNIC and an antenna (usually built into the WNIC) to document the location of secured and unsecured WLANs. The locations of the WLANs derived from the GPS readings, and their corresponding SSIDs, are published in databases that live on the Internet. War driving derives its name from the movie, War Games, in which hackers gained access to traditional networks by randomly dialing telephone numbers until a modem answered. (See GPS). close

driving around an area with a laptop computer and an 802.11 wireless LAN adapter in order to find unsecured wireless LANs. When the laptop's wireless adapter (NIC) is set to promiscuous mode, it will receive any packets within its range. The goal is to find vulnerable sites either to obtain free Internet service or to potentially gain illegal access to the organization's data.