Preface: The internet is full of garbage. The founders of the internet envisioned computers around the world, interconnected, forming a mass network. What they didn't envision, however, is a network of millions of devices competing for IPv4 namespace. The reason why I bring this up is because war-dialing IPv4 is significantly easier than doing the same on IPv6. I see IPv4 more similar to phone numbers (where the term originates), as they can be easily guessed due to the finite number of available IP addresses(4.3 billion). IPv6 on the other hand: (source)
IPv4 allows 32bit IP address written in the form of a.b.c.d (for example, 127.127.127.127), where a,b,c,d are one byte (8 bits) each. Hence a total of 4 bytes = 32 bits.
the total number of unique addresses possible in IPv6 = 2128 = 3.4×1038
Why does this matter? If we were using IPv6 as we should be, war-dialing the massive IPv6 namespace wouldn't be as easy of a feat.
War dialing in 2021
Since everyone still loves IPv4 so much, war dialing in 2021 is easy, fun, and sometimes plain weird. Enter Shodan:
If you don't already have a Shodan account, I recommend creating one now so you can utilize their search engine and find interesting devices on the internet. In the screenshot above, I entered a simple query which searches for the string "hipcam" and anything with a screenshot. This is the fastest way to find thousands of publicly accessible cameras.
War Dialing these cameras on Shodan really do yield interesting results. I've seen feeds of family's living rooms, babies sleeping, old peoples' homes, restaurants in service, gas station counters, liquor stores, and retail storefronts. The crazy thing to realize about this, is that one device yields ~34K results around the world. Imagine how many other devices are out there.