WiFi pistol shown at Defcon

Every year, smaller, more powerful processors come to market - hacker weaponry follows the same trend. Last year, the Shmoo Group and Flexilis demonstrated long-ranged WiFi and Bluetooth rifles, but this year, wireless weaponry becomes smaller, but much more powerful. The Shmoo Group, known for melding cool security gear into hardware, showed off their latest creation, a powerful 802.11 pistol, which can detect WiFi networks for miles.

The WiFi pistol consists of a Compaq IPaq PDA, a Compact Flash battery sleeve, a Senao wireless card, a 9db patch antenna, a rotary attenuator, one watt amp and an external battery pack.

The electronics are mounted on a slingshot frame that has an integrated pistol grip. The PDA runs Wellreiter, which is a network detection and auditing tool similar to NetStumbler or Kismet. With everything turned up full blast, the pistol can detect networks miles away. Beetle, a member of the Shmoo Group, says that the pistol usually detects 50-60 networks instantly.

The one watt amplifier, combined with the nine db antenna and the power coming the Senao card, produce an incredible amount of radiated energy. The rotary attenuator can reduce the power feeding the antenna, to prevent power swamping of close access points. Under normal usage, Beetle says that the pistol can last eight hours straight.