THG Takes to the Air for Wi-Fi 'War Flying'

Cessna 172 from Team Tomshardware

How many wireless access points are out there? How many have security features turned on? On April 27, 2004 Humphrey Cheung, an editor for THG, along with three other hackers took to the skies to find out. Flying in two small airplanes and using cheap off-the-shelf components, they found 4500+ wireless access points (WAPS). Surprisingly, only 30% of the access points had encryption turned on. In addition, a successful video conferencing session was done between the planes. In fact, this may have been the first successful video chat between two small planes using everyday hardware.

The wireless community came together in the weeks before this war fly and provided the second plane as well as two WAPS on the ground. The WAPS were set up so that we could legally obtain Internet access from the air. Luke Myers, who founded Highlandshighspeed Wireless ISP at the age of 15, flew the second plane. Luke also set up a WAP in Pacific Palisades, California. John Hering and James Burgess, both from dailywireless , set up a WAP in downtown Los Angeles. They were also passengers in the second plane. Dailywireless has published an article with detailed analysis of what happened in their plane. Finally, Mike Outmesguine, cofounder of SOCALWUG and the author of the upcoming book Wi-Fi Toys was the passenger in THG's plane.