(Script to) Locate Any WiFi Router By Its MAC Address sth posted in wifi

http://midnightresearch.com/pages/locate-any-wifi-router-by-its-mac-address/
(Script to) Locate Any WiFi Router By Its MAC Address
sth posted in wifi on September 12th, 2008

I saw a slashdot post earlier today about a not-so-secret API from SkyHook Wireless to Locate Any WiFi Router By Its MAC Address. I thought this was pretty cool and useful, so I wrote up a quick python hack/script that would use the API, and I thought that I’d add this as a wicrawl plug-in shortly. It takes the BSSID as an input, and outputs all of the information it finds, and also can output a google earth KML file to import the location.

I found the information amazingly and scarily accurate so far. When I check for my local Access Point it gives me my physical address (in addition to the coordinates) within two street numbers.

Here’s some anonymized output from the script:

./get-coordinates-from-bssid.py 00:11:22:33:aa:c6 ~/tmp/output.kml [*] City: Boston [*] Country: United States [*] Address: Fancy Pants Rd [*] Longitude: -70.17905 [*] County: Middlesex [*] State: Massachusetts [*] Output KML File: /Users/aaronp/tmp/output.kml [*] Street Number: 1337 [*] Postal Code: 02138 [*] Latitude: 40.3823964 [*] Finished..


Let me know if you find it in any way useful. I would guess though now that it’s been slashdot’d that the service will likely change as soon as people really start using it. Hopefully not though, :)

2 Responses to '(Script to) Locate Any WiFi Router By Its MAC Address'

1. 1.:: Hackology Blog ::. - Get physical location of wireless router from its MAC address(BSSID)
September 15th, 2008 at 11:02 am

[...] http://midnightresearch.com/pages/locate-any-wifi-router-by-its-mac-address/ [...]

2. 2Find a WiFi router by it’s MAC address | LiamM.com
September 16th, 2008 at 11:02 am

[...] a street address) given a BSSID (MAC address of a WiFi network). I stumbled on to a post on Midnight Research Labs in which they’ve provided a python script that you can use to access this [...]