By: Drivers.com staff
Date: 2008-02-04
The term 'war driving' sounds like it might be something a war correspondent does, but it refers to a breed of computer hackers who drive around with their wireless-equipped laptops looking for vulnerable wireless routers to access.
If you have a wireless router in your home or business it will likely have a range of as much as 150 meters. When you boot up your wireless-equipped computer you�ll see how many other routers are in range. Without adequate security your computer is essentially open to other wireless devices.
For most War Drivers, finding your router is a challenge akin to hunting. It's fun to see what you�re not supposed to see. There�s no malicious intent. Free internet access through your computer may be all the war driver is after.
For their part, the war drivers don t generally see themselves as bad people. On the contrary, many consider themselves as providing a service in revealing how insecure our computers really are and as part of the solution rather than the problem. Some of the legal aspects of war driving are up in the air.
At the higher end of the scale, the serous war driver is out there using sophisticated tools to break through the encryption barrier that is supposed to keep your computer secure (some wireless computer users never even set up encryption). The software tools to do this are often available free over the internet. One such application, Airsnort, describes itself like this:
'AirSnort is a wireless LAN (WLAN) tool which recovers encryption keys. AirSnort operates by passively monitoring transmissions, computing the encryption key when enough packets have been gathered.�
In other words, the war driver is sitting within range of your wireless network and patiently gathering enough information to crack your system.
'AirSnort,' says WindowSecurity.com, 'is a program that listens to the wireless radio transmissions of a network and gathers them into a meaningful manner. After enough time has passed (sometimes in a matter of hours) and data are gathered, analytical tools process the data until the network security is broken. At that point everything that crosses the network can be read in plain text.'
It�s a scary thought how vulnerable our computers can be. It looks like there's no real privacy anywhere in this age of electronically available information.
For their part, the war drivers don�t generally see themselves as bad people. On the contrary, many consider themselves as providing a service in revealing how insecure our computers really are and as part of the solution rather than the problem.
Some of the legal aspects of war driving are up in the air. One of the most controversial aspects which gained some notoriety a few years ago was ' warchalking,' a practice in which groups of war drivers would put chalk marks on pavements to indicate where they could find unsecured networks and gain free wireless access to the internet using someone else's paid service provider.
Is this legal? 'There are laws, which apply,' said one expert on technology and law , 'but they weren�t drafted with warchalking in mind. So we don't have cases.'
An updated version of warchalking is using Google Earth to map successes . 'Going around the neighborhood and mapping all the wireless networks may be nothing more than a geeky hobby but it can sure teach you a lot,' says Matt Perry, a war driving enthusiast, 'and viewing the results in Google Earth is icing on the cake. Perry�s web site describes in detail how to achieve this.
However, there's more to war driving than merely driving around and looking for free web access.
'Beginners waste many weekends wardriving their local neighborhoods or business districts,' says one war driving blogger,' describing this activity as 'probing for low-hanging fruit � and a waste of valuable learning time.'
'It's more to an individuals benefit to learn an assortment of wireless LAN penetration tools and work toward the goal of gaining useful information,' the blogger adds. 'Learning the correct application of tools and techniques (not to mention keeping up-to-date) takes time and hard work in a closed environment, but yields much in the way of information technology.'
According to the same blogger, 'The current demand for wireless-security professionals is staggering on an international level. Those who have taken the time to hone their skills in the use of available tools and the latest penetration techniques will be financially rewarded with a great career. I urge you to consider practicing, studying and reading random comments much like this from randoms like myself rather than driving around from neighborhood to neighborhood hoping to send an e-mail through someone�s cable modem.'
Getting noticed by potential customers, the blogger says, is best done by giving them a quick demo of hacking tools and keeping in mind that 'these demonstrations should ALWAYS be done with the permission of a person in authority at the client organization � Doing otherwise can lead to criminal prosecution.'
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If Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Dominion Wars crashes, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Dominion Wars will not start, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Dominion Wars not installing, there are no controls in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Dominion Wars, no sound in game, errors happen in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Dominion Wars – we offer you the most common ways to solve these problems.
Be sure to update your graphics card drivers and other software
Before letting out all of your bad feelings toward development team, do not forget to go to the official website of your graphics card manufacturer and download the latest drivers. There are often specially prepared optimized drivers for specific game. You can also try to install a past versions of the driver if the problem is not solved by installing the current version. It is important to remember that only the final version of the video card driver must be loaded – try not to use the beta version, since they can have some terrible bugs.
DriverScannerThis software will automatically find the newest drivers for your PC and install them. After this you can forget about updating your device drivers manually.* this application was officially certified by Microsoft |
SpeedUpMyPCThis soft will automatically analyze your PC, solve any Windows problems, check installed programs, optimize settings, remove garbage from system registry and many other things. In result your PC will work much faster.* this application was officially certified by Microsoft |
Do not also forget that for good game operation you may need to install the latest version DirectX, which can be found and downloaded from official Microsoft website.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Dominion Wars not starting
Many of the problems with games launching happen because of improper installation. Check, if there was any error during installation, try deleting the game and run the installer again, but before install don’t forget to disable antivirus – it may often mistakenly delete files during installation process. It is also important to remember that the path to the folder with a game should contain only Latin characters and numbers.
You also have to check whether there is enough space on the HDD for installation. You can also try to run the game as an administrator in compatibility mode with different versions of Windows.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Dominion Wars crashes. Low FPS. Friezes. Hangs
Your first solution to this problem install new drivers for a video card. This action can drastically rise game FPS. Also, check the CPU and memory utilization in the Task Manager (opened by pressing CTRL + SHIFT + ESCAPE). If before starting the game you can see that some process consumes too many resources - turn off the program or simply remove this process from Task Manager.
Next, go to the graphics settings in the game. First – turn off anti-aliasing and try to lower the setting, responsible for post-processing. Many of them consume a lot of resources and switching them off will greatly enhance the performance, and not greatly affect the quality of the picture.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Dominion Wars crashes to the desktop
If Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Dominion Wars often crashes to the desktop, try to reduce quality of the graphics. It is possible that your PC just does not have enough performance and the game may not work correctly. Also, it is worth to check out for updates - most of today's games have the automatic patches installation system on startup if internet connection is available. Check to see whether this option is turned off in the settings and switch it on if necessary.
Black of black screen in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Dominion Wars
The most common issue with black screen is a problem with your GPU. Check to see if your video card meets the minimum requirements and install the latest drivers (DriverScanner will help you with this). Sometimes a black screen is the result of a lack of CPU performance.
If everything is fine with your hardware and it satisfies the minimum requirements, try to switch to another window (ALT + TAB), and then return to the game screen.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Dominion Wars is not installed. Installation hangs
First of all, check that you have enough space on the HDD for installation. Remember that to work properly installer requires the declared volume of space, plus 1-2 GB of additional free space on the system drive. In general, remember this rule – you must always have at least 2 gigabytes of free space on your system drive (usually it’s disk C) for temporary files. Otherwise, the games and the other software may not work correctly or even refuse to start.
MaxiDisk will help you with finding and removing any temporary files, not need for Windows or other programs to run. This are garbage files, and you will be very interested to see, how much of free space you really have on your PC hard drive.
Problems with the installation may also be due to the lack of an internet connection or it’s instability. Also, do not forget to stop the antivirus for the time game installation – sometimes it interferes with the correct file copy, or delete files by mistake, mistakenly believing they are viruses.
Saves not working in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Dominion Wars
By analogy with the previous solution, check for free space on HDD - both on where the game is installed, and the system drive. Often your saves are stored in a folder of documents, which is separate from the game itself.
Controls not working in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Dominion Wars
Sometimes the controls in game do not work because of the simultaneous connection of multiple input devices. Try disabling gamepad, or, if for some reason, you have two connected keyboards or mouses, leave only one pair of devices. If your gamepad does not work, remember - the games usually officially support only native Xbox controllers. If your controller is defined in system differently - try using software that emulates the Xbox gamepad (eg, x360ce - step by step manual can be found here).
No sound in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Dominion Wars
Check if the sound works in other programs. Then check to see if the sound is turned off in the settings of the game, and whether there is correct audio playback device selected, which is connected your speakers or headset. After this check volumes in system mixer, it can also be turned off there.
If you are using an external audio card - check for new drivers at the manufacturer's website.