#warkitteh

There is no doubt that cats are the reigning rulers of the internet, with famous cats such as “Grumpy Cat” and “Sockington” having more followers and likes on their personal Twitter and Facebook profiles than thousands of human celebrities and publication companies. Now it looks like felines are taking a step beyond cat memes and YouTube videos, as the largest hacking conference – the Defcon – revealed a pair of gadgets that combine pets with computer security.

Security engineer Gene Bransfield from internet security firm, Tenacity Solutions, Inc. showcased the “WarKitteh,” along with the “Denial of Service Dog,” by attaching mini-computers and antennae to two of his friends’ pets, and transforming them into professional hackers of unstable WiFi signals. For the cat’s collar, Bransfield installed a Spark Core development board, which consisted of a compatible cloud-powered wireless programming chip, along with an operating system which provided the feline with the connectivity required.

The device can easily end up in the hands of a professional hacker, who could use this information for the worse, as it was relatively cheap and cost Bransfield less than $100 to produce.

So to all those animal-haters out there; you might want to buy one of these four-legged creatures now, since they can potentially come home with your neighbors’ WiFi details, regardless of what they do to your furniture. On the other hand, this may also come in handy to all those cat-obsessed people who spend their time making videos of their pets jumping off stuff or chasing their tails, or whatever it is that they do, as the device also comes with a GPS technology system which can keep track of their cat, and stores the data on a SD memory card, making sure their cat never runs away again.

The GPS technology enables the feline to roam around the streets, as it genuinely believes it has been given complete freedom, without realizing that its new collar is successfully picking up WiFi signals from around the neighborhood, that are either unprotected, or use weak encryption systems such as Wired Equivalent Privacy.

Cat collar, used to identify open WiFi ntworks

At Defcon 22, a security researcher thought out of the box in order to prove to us all how WiFi security is not at all in a state that we would want it to be. The man, named Gene Bransfield, used a cat collar with GPS and a built in cellular modem, and came up with the idea for WarKitteh, a device designed to detect open or vulnerable WiFi networks. The first test ever conducted implied using a…

"Bransfield created the Warkitteh by equipping his cat Coco’s collar with GPS, Wi-Fi, and Spark Core chip. It basically turned his furry little friend into a furry little wardriver, patrolling an area looking for accessible networks."