Skip to Main Content
Wireless Hacks
book

Wireless Hacks

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

Tracking 802.11 Frames in Ethereal

Use Ethereal to track wireless frame data it normally can’t capture.

In addition to capturing Layer 2 (and greater) traffic on its own, Ethereal can open dump files saved by other tools that incorporate additional data, such as Kismet [Hack #31] or KisMAC [Hack #24]. Recent versions of Ethereal will happily display all 802.11 frame data that these passive monitoring tools can capture (Figure 3-38). This allows you to watch the behavior of devices at the 802.11 protocol layer, which can give you valuable insight into what is actually happening on your wireless network. Keep in mind that Kismet and KisMAC will capture all 802.11 they hear, including data for networks you might not be interested in. This is especially true if you capture data while the tools are scanning all available channels.

Ethereal can display 802.11 frames captured by other programs.

Figure 3-38. Ethereal can display 802.11 frames captured by other programs.

To focus on a particular access point, use a display filter on your data. The simplest way to create a filter from scratch is to build it interactively using the filter editor. At the bottom of the screen, click the Filter: button. Next, click Add Expression, which opens the filter editor. Select the information in which you are interested in the Field name pane. Since we are after the BSS ID of an AP, select IEEE 802.11 BSS Id. Click = = as the Relation, and enter the MAC address ...

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.
Start your free trial

You might also like

Maximum Wireless Security

Maximum Wireless Security

Cyrus Peikari, Seth Fogie
Real Time Over Wireless

Real Time Over Wireless

Jerome Henry / Rob Barton
Troubleshooting Linux® Firewalls

Troubleshooting Linux® Firewalls

Michael Shinn, Scott Shinn

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596005598Catalog PageErrata