See, in 2005 John Hodgeman (PC in the old Mac vs. PC Apple ads) published “The Areas of My Expertise” [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Areas_of_My_Expertise#Th...], including a description of hobo signs and 700 hobo names. Hodgeman was on The Daily Show and the hobo thing took off for a few minutes.
I went to one of Hodgeman’s signings during that book tour. Jonathan Coulton was there during his his “Thing a Week” project and traditional Hot Fries and brandy (or bourbon?) were served. I bought a copy of the book and some hobo chalk for my brother.
We were talking when Hodgeman went to sign my copy of the book. He asked my name and started to write “To Mike”.. I blurted out “No! It’s for my brother!” He looked up at me and let out a sigh before looking down and continuing without pause: “To Mike — If you wish you may give this to <brother’s name>”. Always wondered if he had that one chambered or if he came up with it on the spot. Either way, brilliant, and, 100% in character given the tone of the book.
I have once seen warchalk showing an open wifi point (in a city in the UK).
This would be pre-2005 fwiw.
It is a meme in the Dawkins' sense of the word. The set of three symbols contains the necessary and sufficient information to connect to an open wireless node (has-content or purpose). Warchalk symbols can *mutate* by being drawn expertly (think surface location and size) or poorly (bad handwriting makes SSID illegible) and can be deployed expertly (sign marks the location of highest signal strength) or poorly (sign only gives general area--YMMV). Warchalking can *replicate*, because once I demonstrate these symbols, any techie could replicate the Warchalking meme.
The cultural context of 2002 is really interesting. In 2002 and we're still on 802.11a/b. The Apple AirPort was out at that time. As I recall, you were required to set it up (didn't have default SSID/password), and you could leave it open. You might just do that if you're not so hip to the whole SSID and WEP terminology, and thinking differently about you network's security--more simply as a computer hardware consumer. And Jonny Ive was making some smart looking Apple products that sparked consumer consumption. Lots of product in the hands of novice computer users.
Piracy was huge! Software (Hotline) and music (Napster). The punk ethic (going to war against the man/corporations), before music industry went on it's own war against piracy. I would even go as far to suggest (software) piracy and it's punk ethic was rebranded as "darkweb" full of terrorists and predators.
Squat and Gobble and coffee shops were adding WIFI to attract customers. Warchalking demonstrates to a decision maker it doesn't take much information to communicate this service to these potential laptop carrying high-income customers. You don't have to "Warchalk" to get something useful out the Warchalking meme.
People leaving their networks open is just bad network security. It was never going to last to become widely adopted practice. (Now all of our routers come pre-configured with default SSID and passwords--that's another story, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_password).
Warchalking, no matter how many people did this (five or five hundred people), it still works as a meme. It communicates, it mutates, and it replicates. Brilliant.
Similar street language? "Colorful Language: Decoding Utility Markings Spray-Painted on City Streets (2018)" https://99percentinvisible.org/article/colorful-language-dec...
It gets worse once you dig deeper and find out how T-Online, vodafone and o2 hotspots work.
[1] for the curious: https://github.com/yolosec/upcgen
It may have been an artifact of the time, but it remains to me surprising how quickly and easily a timely and well-packaged idea can catch people's attention and propagate, even now. (Note that warchalking preceded John Hodgeman's book, but he too was playing off the background curiousity of hobo signs. There's no necessary origin point for combinations like this. You're just mixing and matching what's in the air.)
Our same rough circle of people are why you talk of Betteridge's law, life-hacking, or even know about that Steve Balmer "Developers! Developers!" video. If it didn't come through that route, those concepts or presentations would almost emerged from some other corner of the online world. There was no ulterior motive, no intent to get rich or famous, just people playing as they do with what's interesting in the world around them, and the ideas they spark.
When I looked into war chalking and how it's discussed, I found that most of the news at the time was based on an FBI notice to businesses, which was picked up by the media as the ridiculous story it was. I honestly doubt it actually happened, beyond the two or three Usenet posters that inspired the notice.
https://www.eccouncil.org/train-certify/certified-ethical-ha...
With rooted Android it might be possible if you can shut down anything else that might be accessing the NIC (Android’s NetworkManager equivalent) but otherwise you’re out of luck.
Thankfully insecure/broken crypto WiFi is mostly a thing of the past.
(I went to a restaurant recently that had its WiFi profile on a QR code, which I found very convenient.)
