Noob questions: WiGle basics and real-time monitoring
OSINT enthusiast here: I'm entirely new to WiGle, only learned about "wardriving" today, but would appreciate clarification to a few issues that piqued my interest. I'm not much of a techie, but keen to understanding the basics:
- Basic question: is all your data, and all the APs on your map only collected by wardriving? I tried reading through your FAQ, but couldn't find a definite answer to this. Do you have any other means of collecting these data points? It's difficult to believe there are so many wardriving enthusiasts around the world: to create this amount of data, you'd need to have hundreds of thousands of users, no?
- How do you keep the map updated? I checked some buildings I am familiar with, and the APs appeared several years old (I know the APs have different names these days). Is it just because no one has been wardriving in the neighbourhood in years? (By the way, what is the widest radius of advanced wardriving equipment? To capture an AP do you have to drive the street just adjacent to the building?)
- Once an AP has been logged, will it be there for eternity even if in real life the AP device was moved or destroyed? Because if so, this would create "ghost" data which would accumulate and populate the map within years, rendering the data obsolete.
- The search function only allows you to use by year, not by month. It would be great if it was possible to identify new APs created in, say, over the past month. Likewise, a sudden disappearance of APs could be a signal of something bigger at move.
- Sometimes on the map you see dotted lines that are straight as arrow, even up to dozens or hundreds of kilometers long, with more or less equidistant intervals in areas with no straight roads / wilderness. What could they be? Airplanes with a wifi on? Powerlines? Underground cables or pipelines (my understanding is that some modern gas pipelines are connected to the internet for monitoring and maintenance purposes)?
- Why is Ukraine entirely blank? (I hope it's because you are protecting the civilians for humanitarian reasons! If so, good on you guys)
- Why is Europe, and Russian-European border regions so heavily mapped on the European side, but so little on the Russian side? It would be great if we had a way of observing recent changes and trends on APs along these border regions: could be an important early signal of a troop build-up.
Thanks for all the helpful clarifications in advance!
- Basic question: is all your data, and all the APs on your map only collected by wardriving? I tried reading through your FAQ, but couldn't find a definite answer to this. Do you have any other means of collecting these data points? It's difficult to believe there are so many wardriving enthusiasts around the world: to create this amount of data, you'd need to have hundreds of thousands of users, no?
- How do you keep the map updated? I checked some buildings I am familiar with, and the APs appeared several years old (I know the APs have different names these days). Is it just because no one has been wardriving in the neighbourhood in years? (By the way, what is the widest radius of advanced wardriving equipment? To capture an AP do you have to drive the street just adjacent to the building?)
- Once an AP has been logged, will it be there for eternity even if in real life the AP device was moved or destroyed? Because if so, this would create "ghost" data which would accumulate and populate the map within years, rendering the data obsolete.
- The search function only allows you to use by year, not by month. It would be great if it was possible to identify new APs created in, say, over the past month. Likewise, a sudden disappearance of APs could be a signal of something bigger at move.
- Sometimes on the map you see dotted lines that are straight as arrow, even up to dozens or hundreds of kilometers long, with more or less equidistant intervals in areas with no straight roads / wilderness. What could they be? Airplanes with a wifi on? Powerlines? Underground cables or pipelines (my understanding is that some modern gas pipelines are connected to the internet for monitoring and maintenance purposes)?
- Why is Ukraine entirely blank? (I hope it's because you are protecting the civilians for humanitarian reasons! If so, good on you guys)
- Why is Europe, and Russian-European border regions so heavily mapped on the European side, but so little on the Russian side? It would be great if we had a way of observing recent changes and trends on APs along these border regions: could be an important early signal of a troop build-up.
Thanks for all the helpful clarifications in advance!
Map updates are done when a user or anonymous user uploads a scan. WiGLe is neither Google nor Apple who are (ab)using every device on their platfom for that exact function when anyone turns on the "high accuracy" location method.
The scan doesn't have to come from the App, that is just the most convenient way.
straight lines do come from people scanning in flight, mostly smaller planes or drones. It is not recommended nor authorized on commercial USA flights. Cellphone gps does not like going 500kmh and it behaves sporadically. I have used gps apps on commercial flights, you need a window seat for the best functionality. The way to do so without violating any FAA rules in the USA is to go into airplane mode, then turn on gps only, not high availablity. Hold the back of the phone to the window until you get a solid lock on 7-10 sats. After that as long as you keep the phone kinda close 10cm-15cm to the window you'll maintain that lock with only the sats on that side of the aircraft. to be FAA compliant you also need to disable wifi complely during takeoff and landing. You should also turn off active beaconing scans and instead passivly log. I do not know about rules for other countries.
Because the points are triangulated by signal strength optimally a user will try to get on all sides of the access point for the system to approximate the location more accurately. Directivity and signal bouncing can skew results and beacons travel much farther than a reliable connection can be made.
The kind of signal strength received is highly dependent on device sensitivity, the antennas and placement of said antennas used to do the capture. Many of the high point count users use high gain antennas, multiple radios and kismet on linux/Pi to increase their point count, but that wildly skews the final location of more distant points.
The reason there are no scans from the Russian side of the border is likely because no one has scanned from there.
An example of mass scanning would be kismet on ddwrt based wireless devices and loaned to taxi or uber drivers.
The scan doesn't have to come from the App, that is just the most convenient way.
straight lines do come from people scanning in flight, mostly smaller planes or drones. It is not recommended nor authorized on commercial USA flights. Cellphone gps does not like going 500kmh and it behaves sporadically. I have used gps apps on commercial flights, you need a window seat for the best functionality. The way to do so without violating any FAA rules in the USA is to go into airplane mode, then turn on gps only, not high availablity. Hold the back of the phone to the window until you get a solid lock on 7-10 sats. After that as long as you keep the phone kinda close 10cm-15cm to the window you'll maintain that lock with only the sats on that side of the aircraft. to be FAA compliant you also need to disable wifi complely during takeoff and landing. You should also turn off active beaconing scans and instead passivly log. I do not know about rules for other countries.
Because the points are triangulated by signal strength optimally a user will try to get on all sides of the access point for the system to approximate the location more accurately. Directivity and signal bouncing can skew results and beacons travel much farther than a reliable connection can be made.
The kind of signal strength received is highly dependent on device sensitivity, the antennas and placement of said antennas used to do the capture. Many of the high point count users use high gain antennas, multiple radios and kismet on linux/Pi to increase their point count, but that wildly skews the final location of more distant points.
The reason there are no scans from the Russian side of the border is likely because no one has scanned from there.
An example of mass scanning would be kismet on ddwrt based wireless devices and loaned to taxi or uber drivers.
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