Pictured above is Coco, a cat and a computer hacker. She probably doesn’t know about that last part. Gene Bransfield, a computer security expert, outfitted her with a collar that mapped Wi-Fi networks as she roamed her neighborhood. Andy Greenberg of Wired describes how it works:
And Bransfield had built into that collar a Spark Core chip loaded with his custom-coded firmware, a Wi-Fi card, a tiny GPS module and a battery—everything necessary to map all the networks in the neighborhood that would be vulnerable to any intruder or Wi-Fi mooch with, at most, some simple crypto-cracking tools.
This is similar to the practice of “wardriving”–driving around in a car, searching for unprotected Wi-Fi networks. Coco does the same thing on four feet with the help of Bransfield’s “WarKitteh” collar, which cost him just $100 to build. He will give a presentation about it at DefCon, a convention about computer hacking and security.
via Neatorama
Image: Gene Bransfield
