How to capture and overlay Wifi access point locations over Goog earth

By +Warwagon
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Grand Master

+Warwagon MVC

Posted
  • MVC
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Wouldn't it be neat if you could drive around a city or town and have your laptop automatically pick up all the Wi-Fi points detected along the way including GPS coordinates? Then take that information and overlay it on top of Google Earth?

First off you need a program called netstumbler. It’s a pretty popular Wi-Fi detection application that some of you will be quite familiar with it. As you drive around, it makes a list of all the Wi-Fi points it finds as it finds them. If you add a GPS receiver for a PC into the mix, then along with the SSID it also gives you the longitude and latitude of where the signal was first detected.

The GPS part takes some tinkering. I used the GPS-360, the one include with streets and trips 2008. That particular one didn’t require any setup. It just worked as long as you have the GPS drivers installed (duh) and the GPS option turned on in Netstumbler.

Step 1

Install netstumber

http://www.netstumbler.com/

Now plug in your GPS open netstumbler and start driving around. I recommend keeping your eye on netstumbler for the first few minutes. In the beginning the SSID's will show up but no GPS coordinates will be seen. Once you drive around for a few minutes and the GPS gets it's lock on a few satellites, you will start to see the coordinates appear, at this point just do a control + A and delete everything thus far and start fresh.

Once you get bored it’s time to save your findings.

below is an example image I found online

netstumbler.jpg

Click File / export / summary.

By default it will save the file without an extension. But to make step 2 happy, lets give the file an extension of .txt.

Step 2

Download the free application “Earthstumbler” http://mboffin.com/earthstumbler/

2.jpg

Once you download it, use Earthstumbler to open your netstumbler summery file.

Then tell Earthstumbler to save what it has created. What it will create is a KML file. When opened with Google earth installed it will overlay on Google earth the location of all of the wifi points you came in contact with on your drive.

Here is an example of one that I made after driving around. I'm not giving out anyone's personal information, all the SSID's on the map would show up on any Wifi Device.

captureut.jpg

So go have fun!

Grand Master

Tha Bloo Monkee

Posted
Posted

And this is one of the reasons to secure your network...

It would be nice to leave an open wireless for people to use but there are always people who will abuse it, so I protect mine.

Cool concept though.

Grand Master

+Xinok Subscriber²

Posted
  • Subscriber²
Posted

And this is one of the reasons to secure your network...

It would be nice to leave an open wireless for people to use but there are always people who will abuse it, so I protect mine.

Cool concept though.

I fail to see what this has to do with securing your network. Even if you secure your wireless network, other people can still detect it's presence. After all, it's wireless. And no, hiding the SSID doesn't work.

Grand Master

primexx

Posted
Posted

And this is one of the reasons to secure your network...

It would be nice to leave an open wireless for people to use but there are always people who will abuse it, so I protect mine.

Cool concept though.

or you can have a secured one and another open one for people to use :p

Grand Master

Tha Bloo Monkee

Posted
Posted

I fail to see what this has to do with securing your network. Even if you secure your wireless network, other people can still detect it's presence. After all, it's wireless. And no, hiding the SSID doesn't work.

I am fully aware, and never once did I say otherwise.

But if it wasn't secured, then using a method like this just keeps it even more open to being abused.

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