Since 1993, Las Vegas has been a destination for some of the world’s smartest security pros, researchers, hackers, and government agents. It’s not the gambling or the magic that bring these White, Black, and Grey Hats to Vegas– it’s DEF CON.

DEF CON has hosted a variety of talks and contests covering myriad hacker-centric interests. One contest, the “Wi-Fi Shootout,” had teams compete to create the longest distance Wi-Fi links (in 2005, Team PAD created a link spanning 125 miles!).

One talk that caught my attention last summer was Gene Bransfield’s “Weaponizing your Pets,” in which the War Kitteh was introduced

Photo by Tom Brewster/The Guardian

According to Bransfield, he started including pictures of (and stories about) cats during his security presentations. After one presentation an attendee offered loan of his GPS-enabled cat collar, which inspired Bransfield to create a Wi-Fi auditing collar based on the Spark Core development board.

After Coco the kitty ran through Bransfield’s neighborhood, the SD card in her collar had recorded over 20 vulnerable Wi-Fi networks, including GPS information of where they were spotted.

Wouldn’t it be nice to know your Wi-Fi is secure before an Evil Genius Cat Lady deploys an army of War Kittehs in your neighborhood? We’ve got you covered.

No word yet on whether MetaGeek will start development of the Wi-Spy Wallaby for RF Analysis in the Outback, but we will be sure to update our blog with any developments!