Posted on | By BusySignal

The WarDrive Competition
of
The Year

We are exiting the World Wide WarDrive 2025 event – With the WiGLE Team providing support and infrastructure and The Radio Frequency Hackers Sanctuary in support of it.

Reference:

As the timeline approaches people will check the WiGLE maps for areas that “need” to be stumbled through. This is particularly important as the points are based on a number of things – including NEW WiFi found with-in your area of the map selected and a multiplier for the Fox Found (more on that later).

Selecting a section and the coordinates are then saved in the WiGLE site and if it checks out – you get approval and are now a contestant in the WarDrive Contest.

This section is what is referred as a QUAD.

The Purpose:

  • Bring the community together.
  • A unified goal to have fun.
  • A kick start for the learning process – rig building, WiFi Beacons, etc.
  • Do a little shit talking (a little).
  • Gain points for the Radio Frequency Hackers Sanctuary RF Village Capture The Flag at DEFCON

Scoring:

In recent years, the scoring has been explained thoroughly and provided – as to how your score is calculated. This gives us incredible insight into quad selection – this is becomes super important in understanding what is needed for the competition.

Read The Freaking Manual as they say. The hints are there. The answers are before us.

From the website:

sumOfScores = 0; for (contestant in contestants) { contestant.rawScore = contestant.quadFoundInceptionRatio
*
(1 + contestant.foxFoundRatio); sumOfScores += contestant.rawScore; }

 

Fox Finding / Hunting:

In order to provide some additional variables to the contest, a select few of the existing WiFi is designated as a Fox. The “Fox Hunting” term is borrowed from Amateur Radio and other methods of contest for transmitter hunting. The Direction Finding or Transmitter Hunting here enabled further gamification and multipliers for the final score. It brings an additional situational awareness needed to help gather not just as many new points, but to capture/stumble the WiFi Access Points selected as the Fox to help differentiate scores.

 

Strategy:

As with anything on the internet – there are lots of opinions on things related to WarDriving and the contest – however that lands – I am going to provide my my approach – be it something that makes sense to others or not. It would seem a bit of a track record exists for my ability to have something concrete in my process. This may help others in their quest. It may help in your quest.

I took what I learned on my first year of WarDrive competition – DEFCON 30, (ScoreBoard – https://wigle.net/wwwdlead/DC30) where I will self proclaim created an upset win which placed me on the map for WarDrive Builds and sharing parts lists. That detail still held true through this years DEFCON 33 World Wide WarDrive Event (ScoreBoard – https://wigle.net/wwwdlead/DC33).

Scheduling:

First and foremost – the announcement for the contest start date and timing generally comes a few months or so before its date of activation. So this is where you start to block calendars off, organize whatever support you need to engage in a multi-day contest and finally review if any of it is even possible.
The most important factor to this contest is TIME. It is absolutely the most the key factor next the Quad selection process that is needed.

In parallel to that above, you’re reviewing your area, areas near you, or places you can travel to for the LEAST WiFi found, large enough to qualify for a decent quad area with residential or commercial population so that your driving will have a real collection ability.

Quad Selection:

Back to the MATH, Back to the FAQ.
Review the scoring and as of this post, the details above identify that the lowest known WiFi existing in an area, where that area is a large enough of a population that would be expected to contain significant WiFi, which will provide the greatest ratio of New WiFi added to WiGLE against what is already found there.

  • Existing WiFi = Starting WiFi
  • Lowest Starting WiFi enables best possibility for adding WiFi at the highest ratio which enables highest score.

As I started the scheduling I had also started the agonizing and excruciating process of where to go. I had mostly, already ruined the Long Island areas of the dense populated towns and cities – meaning I have already stumbled a lot – if not most of Long Island to obtain a current top 10 position on the WiGLE All Time Scorers Board. There was however, some small sections, that only had a main road driven and stumbled through. I made certain to leave this area as untouched as I could until the contest began.

Here is the quad I ended up with:

With this data – we review the already stumbled and uploaded areas and make some educated guesses on a few of the item:

  • The heavy blue/purple areas stumbled already – with slight confidence we can think that the existing areas will possibly have a Fox for Fox Points
  • There is a park that might have AP/WiFi infrastructure so we need to travel through it during normal hours
    • Schedule for during the day and not a night trip.
  • There is a college – it might require some walking around – so a phone to carry or a small WarDrive rig that is not suspicious might be good to have
  • There are some commercial/industrial areas.
    • These can be tricky. I know some commercial/industrial locations that turn off a lot of things before they leave for the day.
    • Driving these areas and location during business hours (and possible best and safest during the day) is best to capturing all of their APs and devices that are working in AP mode.
  • Checking the green boundary marker – taking note that driving through the boundary and around the outside of the quad selected is good practice because WiFi and RF bounces.
    • Different receivers/stumblers and the trilateration in WiGLE could make a Fox selected by the WiGLE system for the contest – possibly be just outside the quad.

Pre-WarDrive Check List and Configurations:

  • Phones:
    • Charging Phones and confirming car mounts
    • Cables for the phones
    • App Updates
    • SIM Card Activation
  • WarDrive Rig
    • Kismet Wireless updated to a latest nightly
    • Confirm in-car WiFi Router is operational (SIM Active)
    • Archive old files and clean up disk space
    • Test GPS and scripts for uploads
  • Vehicle Maintenance / Prep
    • Schedule Oil Change for after WarDrive, confirm all fluids, spare tire is good
      • Tools like tire iron, parts like wood block and wood boards for tire changes
    • All Lights work, no burnt out bulbs, heads lights etc.
    • Secondary Battery Charged
    • Antennas mounted / Magnet mount devices
  • Pack and prepare everything to be brought to car first thing in the morning
    • Phones
    • Paper Map/print out of quad
    • Candy (Mike & Ike, Nerd Gummy Clusters, PayDay Candy Bars…)
    • Caffeine and Water (Mountain Dew Baja Blast, Mountain Dew Mystery Flavors)

 

Day 1 of World Wide WarDrive:

  • Early wake up – this quad is a bit of a drive.
  • Load car and Mount Phones
  • Confirm Phones are GPS locked, Screen set to Stay On (Pixel 6 still have an issue scanning when the phone sleeps)
  • Confirm closest phone to see for WiGLE has Map Loaded and monitor it.
  • Power Up Rig, confirm GPS Lock, Confirm WiFi Data Sources are loading, confirm GPS Lock, Confirm Cell Router Linked
  • Arriving at quad and just YoLo’ing the start
  • Covering the already main stumbled roads and getting a bearing for a few things
    • Places for food and drink
    • Places for Gas and Rest
    • Places for best bathroom experience

Here is the MAP after almost 5hrs of WarDrive Day 1

The vehicle has antennas on it and not very hidden so – it is going to stand out (photos later in the post). With that awareness – if I am in an area too long or I find it odd that the neighborhood watch folks are watching a little bit more or the local town or county police all of a sudden appear to be patrolling. I will head out and go to the opposite corner of the quad to spend time driving. This is a lot of grid work and sometimes back tracking through the same areas to get through the neighborhood. Some times the roads are blocked or even the dead ends are hard to get to so it requires some multiple point turns to get around and move.

According to Kismetdb Statistics, the drive TO this quad and Out of this quad to my destination for a family gathering was about 8.5hrs.

2025-07-26 11:14:47 (1753528487)
to
2025-07-26 19:44:17 (1753559057)

8 hours, 29 minutes, 30 seconds

and Kismetdb Stats shows a Breadcrumb travel distance: 274.91716206467976 Km
or 171 miles of driving (to, within quad, and back home)

 

Day 2 of World Wide WarDrive:

  • Start of day is early
  • Load car and Mount Phones
  • Confirm Phones are GPS locked, Screen set to Stay On (Pixel 6 still have an issue scanning when the phone sleeps)
  • Power Up Rig, confirm GPS Lock, Confirm WiFi Data Sources are loading, confirm GPS Lock, Confirm Cell Router Linked
  • Confirm closest phone to see for WiGLE has Map Loaded and monitor it.
  • Drive set up similar to the previous with a focus of perimeter driving
  • After Perimeter and targeting driving a break
  • Then further targeted driving.
  • Targeting driving for me is following:
    • Review the map from the day before
    • Select specific sections to purposefully cover
    • Rinse and Repeat – working through the areas

This is where the map in WiGLE really takes over helping coverage. Confirming areas you’ve already been, confirming areas that could use another drive.

On the Final Day for me to WarDrive – Here are the stats and Final Map I woke up to on Monday Morning:

According to Kismetdb Statistics, Herea re the data points for the two files. I uploaded in the middle of the day or some time in the middle so that I could break and stretch and walk around.
Session one:

2025-07-27 11:17:14 (1753615034)
to
2025-07-27 16:32:16 (1753633936)

4 hours, 51 minutes, and 13 seconds

and Kismetdb Stats shows a Breadcrumb travel distance: 185.00926577149417 Km
or 115 miles of driving

Session two after a break:

2025-07-27 11:17:14 (1753615034)
to
2025-07-27 16:32:16 (1753633936)

5 hours, 15 minutes, and 2 seconds.

and Kismetdb Stats shows a Breadcrumb travel distance: 92.71517099110496 Km
or 57 miles of driving

 

The Equipment and Stats:

The long awaited section maybe considering the expectation is that the tools and gear is what makes this, however, lets just be clear, people using ONLY Phones and small rigs have done an amazing level of WarDriving. I build gear and rigs for purposes beyond the WarDrive and these builds are wonderful to look at provide a lot of data – however – lets just be clear – Phones running the WiGLE App are just as capable to capture WiFi WiGLE points and get you on the board.

Knight Rider
(Build Log Coming Soon)

  • 32 WiFi Radios
    • 8 WiFi Radios per 1 ZimaBoard (4)
    • Kismet Sources Feeding Kimset Wireless over ethernet
  • Hak5 WiFi Coconut
  • 1 LattePanda i5 Running Kismet Wireless
  • 8 Antenna Combiners to make 64 Antennas combine to 8
  • 8 LNA (Low Noise Amps) to overcome db loss in the antenna combiners
  • Voltage Regulators for wide input to 12v output (ZimaBoards)
  • Voltage Regulator for wide input to 19v output (LattePanda i5)
  • 2.5Gb switch
  • Cradlepoint Cellular/WiFi Router, Cellular Puck Antenna
  • 2.4 Ghz antenna for Hak5 Coconut
  • 2.4-5.8Ghz 8 Element Dome Antenna for the roof
  • GMN3 USB GPS (10hz capable, Multiple Constellations Active)

Phones

  • Day 1 – 1 Pixel 6 – Primary Phone for WiGLE Map
  • Day 1/2 – iOS Phone for WAZE and internet posting.
  • Day 2 – 3 Pixel 6
  • WiGLE App Each
  • 1 Primary with SIM Card for Mapping and Data Upload directly without intervention

 

Device Stats:

We have all of the Phone Uploads and all of the Knight Rider WiFi WarDrive rig Uploads tabulated from my Uploads Section in WiGLE:

In the end, after all the effort and driving, it took 3 phones, on Day 2 to wildly catch up to the WiFi WarDrive Rig, showing that you too, can just use phones, and participate in a contest where the funds for equipment can be kept at low cost of entry and keep you competitive. Time and Effort willing – you place the appropriate effort in Time Applied, Quad Selection based on the math provided and again, Time To Compete.

Reviewing the performance of 3 Phones are Day 2, vs 1 Phone on Day 1, we also have a difference of Android OS which I totally botched – not providing any apples to apples comparison.
It does however, not change, that you can easily do this with phones.

Photos:

During a Break, checking out the uConsole, web browser connected to the Kismet Wireless Rig in the back of card, confirming channels are being covered.

 

Knight Rider WiFi WarDrive rig, 9 Antenna cables with filters so that I can still operate amateur radio while WarDriving. 8 Antennas for the 32 WiFi Radios, single 8 element dome on the roof 1 Antenna for the Hak5 2,4Ghz Antenna on the roof 1 USB GPS

 

  • First / 1U just a patch panel port to handle antenna connections and Combiners
  • Second 1U Shelf holding 8 antenna Combiners, 8 LNAs
  • Third 1U – 2 ZimaBoard, each holding 8 WiFi Cards in a PCIe Carrier Board.
  • Forth 1U – 2 ZimaBoard, each holding 8 WiFi Cards in a PCIe Carrier Board.
  • Fifth 1U – Left side Hak5 Coconut with Antenna Mod, Right LattePanda i5 Kismet Wireless server
  • Sixth 1U – Power shelf, all power distribution, voltage regulators, fuses and connects and the 8 port 2.5Gb Network Switch

 

8 Element WiFi in the center, 2.4Ghz Rear Left side, Ham Radio CompacTenna on the right. Hard to see are GPS Puck and Cellular Router Puck.

 

 

Disclaimer: I want to be enormously and 1 Billion Gosh Darn Percent Clear – this is not about eggplant waiving.
This is not about ME – this is about showing you how I did it.
Something that is in the hacker discords and explained sporadically and fragmented all around.
Not on purpose, but because its domain knowledge for so many that its hard to decipher when to do brain dumps.
It’s out there but it’s also difficult to ask the correct questions, in the correct way, to explain what you’re trying to do or understand and it takes an enormous amount of energy to explain it and show and teach. 

This is ME Giving Back to Those that Have explained it to me or others where I absorbed their knowledge.

Where I am standing on the shoulders of the people before me.
So now you can too.

“We are the music‑makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams.”

 

With Love:

For those that have made this a thing of joy and hobby of fun – the past people and current present doing great things for the community;

 

 

 

Category: General Info