MOBILE DEVICE WARDRIVING TOOLS’ COMPARISON: NUKU’ALOFA AS CASE STUDY

This paper describes the justification for a project to assess the security status of wireless networks usage in Nuku’alofa, the CBD of Tonga, By War Driving these suburbs, actual data was gathered to indicate the security status of wireless networks and provide an understanding of the users’ level of awareness and attitudes towards wireless security. This paper also takes the opportunity to compare the performance of the War driving tools that this study employed – GMoN, SWardriving, and Wi-Fi Scan. Wireless network communication remains a challenging and critical issue. This study takes an exploratory approach in which it allows the researcher to explore and dig deeper in to the data to find out the true status of wireless network security in Tonga. Not only that, it also allows the researcher to compare the performance of the tools based on the data. The results are very interesting, they indicate that, since the introduction of the fibre optic network, the usage of wireless communication technology grows as well. However, it is evident that wireless network security is still in its early stages. WEP encryption method is still in use, 24.2% with no encryption, and 9.2% did not change their SSID. In terms of tools’ performances, it is evident in this study that the SWardriving tool outperforms the GMoN and the Wi-Fi Scan tools.