Skip to Content
Wireless Hacks
book

Wireless Hacks

by Rob Flickenger
September 2003
Intermediate to advanced
304 pages
8h 39m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Wireless Hacks

Passive Scanning with KisMAC

Glean detailed network information with this passive scanner for OS X.

KisMAC (http://www.binaervarianz.de/projekte/programmieren/kismac/ ) is another OS X tool that shares a name with the popular monitoring tool Kismet [Hack #31]. This is a much more advanced network discovery and monitoring tool than either MacStumbler or iStumbler [Hack #22].

As stated earlier, active scanners work by sending out probe requests to all available access points. Since these scanners rely on responses to active probing, it is possible for network administrators to detect the presence of tools like MacStumbler and iStumbler (as well as NetStumbler [Hack #21], miniStumbler [Hack #23], or any other tool that makes use of active network probes).

KisMAC is a passive network scanner. Rather than send out active probe requests, it instructs the wireless card to tune to a channel, listen for a short time, then tune to the next channel, listen for a while, and so on. In this way, it is possible to not only detect networks without announcing your presence, but also find networks that don’t respond to probe requests—namely, "closed” networks (APs that have beaconing disabled). But that’s not all. Passive monitors have access to every frame that the radio can hear while tuned to a particular channel. This means that you can not only detect access points, but also the wireless clients of those APs.

The standard AirPort driver doesn’t provide the facility for passive monitoring, so ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

Maximum Wireless Security

Maximum Wireless Security

Cyrus Peikari, Seth Fogie
How to Develop a Great Digital Strategy

How to Develop a Great Digital Strategy

Jeanne W. Ross, Cynthia M. Beath, Ina M. Sebastian

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596005598Catalog PageErrata