Verizon FiOS routers acting crazy?
Wow, its been quite a while since I went wardriving. According to the site my last update was 2 years ago...Anyway
So I decided to rig up a new machine and go scanning for fun. I decided to give linux with Kismet another shot, and oh what a nightmare this has been.
But I did manage to make a lap around my addition, which has always been something of my baseline drive to see if everything is working right. Kismet was scanning fine, but my GPS was going wonky and I dont know if it recorded any positions (since Kismet seems to not like to tell you where the log file goes). But I picked up some strangeness...
On this typical ~1mi loop, in the past I would pick up maybe 20-30 APs. But this time...I picked up a whopping 98 APs. I know that wireless is everywhere now, but the vast majority of these APs were all strange. Instead of a default SSID, they all seemed to have a 5-character long SSID such as "BHJ53", all were WEP-enabled. Looking up the manufacturer ID from the MAC address (00-18-01) shows them all as Actiontec routers, which is what Verizon supplies with their FiOS service (incidentally, theyre quite possibly the worst router ever made).
Verizon FiOS service has been exceptionally popular in my area, but I dont think its THIS popular. According to what I scanned, practically every other house has one of these APs running.
I guess what Im asking is are these legit? It just seems like theres WAY too many of these APs popping up in Kismet to be explained just by market penetration. Does anyone else have experience with a FiOS-saturated area? Is this service really this popular?
So I decided to rig up a new machine and go scanning for fun. I decided to give linux with Kismet another shot, and oh what a nightmare this has been.
But I did manage to make a lap around my addition, which has always been something of my baseline drive to see if everything is working right. Kismet was scanning fine, but my GPS was going wonky and I dont know if it recorded any positions (since Kismet seems to not like to tell you where the log file goes). But I picked up some strangeness...
On this typical ~1mi loop, in the past I would pick up maybe 20-30 APs. But this time...I picked up a whopping 98 APs. I know that wireless is everywhere now, but the vast majority of these APs were all strange. Instead of a default SSID, they all seemed to have a 5-character long SSID such as "BHJ53", all were WEP-enabled. Looking up the manufacturer ID from the MAC address (00-18-01) shows them all as Actiontec routers, which is what Verizon supplies with their FiOS service (incidentally, theyre quite possibly the worst router ever made).
Verizon FiOS service has been exceptionally popular in my area, but I dont think its THIS popular. According to what I scanned, practically every other house has one of these APs running.
I guess what Im asking is are these legit? It just seems like theres WAY too many of these APs popping up in Kismet to be explained just by market penetration. Does anyone else have experience with a FiOS-saturated area? Is this service really this popular?
Disregard this, I think I believe it now. I decided to drive way slow and check out the sides of houses that I could see from the road. Bloody hell there are TONS of FiOS customers out there now, the longest streak I saw was 4 houses in a row with a FiOS interface box...
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