How I built a better mouse trap.
There is an awesome tool for testing wireless networks called a WiFi Pineapple, made by a company called Hak5. Over the years I have used it for security testing at different client sites. I tip my hat to Darren Kitchen and his crew at Hak5 for building some really good and fun tools and for putting together some great instructional videos.
My colleagues and I looked at different high gain antennas and other ideas for solving this problem. I took a few minutes and went to my favorite coffee shop to ponder on the problem. While sitting there letting the brain freewheel, I saw something and one of my best ideas came to me. I needed to reinvent the mouse trap, literally.
One of the nice things about Amazon is you can order just about anything you can think of. So I ordered one of those industrial mouse bait and trap boxes. Then I put a WiFi Pineapple in it, with a battery and an Annoy-a-tron device. If you haven’t seen or heard of an Annoy-a-tron, it is a small board that makes noise at odd intervals. One of the sounds it has is a scratching noise. The thought being that if someone looked at the box and heard the scratching, they would leave it alone thinking that a mouse or other critter was inside.
I also painted two coffee cups black and stuck them over the openings. I did not want to accidentally catch a critter, or have it chomp on the stuff inside.
Then I went to a Goodwill store and found a shirt with a pest control company patch on it. I put on some nice uniform looking pants, the shirt and a ball cap. I made up some fake order sheets and put them on a clipboard. I was all set.
I drove up to the building and told the security guard I was there to put out a new trap. He signed the fake order delivery sheet and I proceeded to put the box against the building in a good spot.
Then, a couple of days later I went back and said that I got the order wrong and needed to get the box back so my boss didn’t charge me for it. Once again, the security guard let me in to go get the box, which had been gathering the data we needed for several days, which was plenty for our report.
I had one client who had a building out in the middle of a big farming area. There were literally several acres of farms in each direction from the building, which made sampling their WiFi network considerably more difficult.
During the delivery of our final report the company was stunned at the information we were able to show them about their network. The question I got asked was “How in the heck did you get all that?” We put the information on how I did it in the report and they were floored. It was one of the times I have been accused of being an evil genius.