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wardriving tools

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tmetro+maemo-users at gmail

Aug 3, 2009, 7:42 PM

Post #1 of 8 (2553 views)
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wardriving tools

I'm looking for suggestions for wardriving tools that will run on the N810.

Well, not really wardriving per the Wikipedia definition (mapping the
location of wireless networks), nor breaking into encrypted networks,
which seems to be the aim of many of the tools in this area.

I'm just looking for a tool that rapidly scans for WiFi networks, and
plays an alert sound when it finds one that is open, and of adequate
strength to likely support a successful connection.

Searching turns up:

A bunch of threads on talk.maemo.org on WiFi Etiquette.

several recommendations for Kismet:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?s=a55b5bbe8072b529efe01499d8cd0759&t=16131&highlight=wardriving

mention that there's a Kismet port available:
http://wigle.net/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=1167

how to install Kismet on a N800, but ends with a note that Kismet is no
longer available, and suggests aircrack-ng:
http://blog.didierstevens.com/2007/11/02/quickpost-installing-kismet-on-a-n800/

And that links to a repository that has versions for up to Chinook, but
not Diablo.

More importantly, both Kismet and aircrack-ng are overkill for what I'm
looking for, and unless they provided an audible alert when a qualifying
network was found, they wouldn't really gain me anything. (I also read
that Kismet puts the network interface into a state that requires a
reboot before you can use it to connect normally, which would be rather
inconvenient.)

If there isn't an existing tool, perhaps something can be cobbled
together with a command line script to put the interface into hunt mode
and polling a /sys or /proc kernel file for found networks?

-Tom
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gary at eyetraxx

Aug 4, 2009, 8:30 AM

Post #2 of 8 (2435 views)
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Re: wardriving tools [In reply to]

Kismet is still in development at kismetwireless.net but I don't recall
if it has any audio capabilities. However, I seem to remember it having
some decent scripting abilities that you might find useful. The project
goals are different; aircrack-ng is focused on pentration whereas Kismet
has more IDS functionality. They both are perfectly functional scanners
but I don't know of anything smaller or lighter. There used to be a
curses based tool for BSD called dstumbler (part of bsd-airtools) but
it's fallen out of development and may not even have the required driver
support to run on a Nokia tablet.

q.v. http://www.freshports.org/net-mgmt/bsd-airtools and
http://web.archive.org/web/20070418182946/http://www.dachb0den.com/projects/dstumbler.html

-Gary
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tmetro+maemo-users at gmail

Aug 5, 2009, 10:57 AM

Post #3 of 8 (2410 views)
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Re: wardriving tools [In reply to]

Tim Teulings wrote:
> If you really only want a tool that beeps if there is an open wireless
> network in reach I could add this feature to WifiInfo...

That'd be terrific.

Ideally a network with a signal strength in excess of some threshold, as
it seems anything below about 25% signal strength never connects.

> WifiInfo uses the internal wlan daemon for scanning...

I ran across WifiInfo in the repository, and I hadn't realized from the
short description that it had a scanning feature (which I see mentioned
in the change log). I thought it only reported on the current, active
connection. (The description does say, "...about your current WLAN
connection...")

> This however would only scan for open networks, not for networks that
> [would need to] be hacked (and would do no hacking at all).

Right, that's the desired behavior.

> Note however that rapit scanning will reduce battery life time
> significantly...

I figured that. That's an acceptable tradeoff when you're looking for a
network.

-Tom
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rael at edge

Aug 7, 2009, 12:49 AM

Post #4 of 8 (2405 views)
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Re: wardriving tools [In reply to]

Hello!

>> If you really only want a tool that beeps if there is an open wireless
>> network in reach I could add this feature to WifiInfo...
>
> That'd be terrific.
>
> Ideally a network with a signal strength in excess of some threshold, as
> it seems anything below about 25% signal strength never connects.

I already did the necessary changes. Expect a binary release (which
needs some testing) hopefully within the next 2 weeks (there are fixes
in another package of mine that I would like to include).

--
Gru�...
Tim

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a.grandi at gmail

Aug 7, 2009, 12:50 AM

Post #5 of 8 (2389 views)
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Re: wardriving tools [In reply to]

Hi,

2009/8/7 Tim Teulings <rael [at] edge>:
> Hello!
>
>>> If you really only want a tool that beeps if there is an open wireless
>>> network in reach I could add this feature to WifiInfo...
>>
>> That'd be terrific.
>>
>> Ideally a network with a signal strength in excess of some threshold, as
>> it seems anything below about 25% signal strength never connects.
>
> I already did the necessary changes. Expect a binary release (which
> needs some testing) hopefully within the next 2 weeks (there are fixes
> in another package of mine that I would like to include).

binary release of Kismet?!

--
Andrea Grandi
email: a.grandi [AT] gmail [DOT] com
website: http://www.andreagrandi.it
PGP Key: http://www.andreagrandi.it/pgp_key.asc
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rael at edge

Aug 7, 2009, 1:12 AM

Post #6 of 8 (2397 views)
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Re: wardriving tools [In reply to]

Hello!

Sorry, no :-)

> binary release of Kismet?!

A new release of WifiInfo that makes (periodic) sounds if an open wlan
with signal strength>=25% is detected.

--
Gru�...
Tim

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tmetro+maemo-users at gmail

Aug 7, 2009, 10:16 AM

Post #7 of 8 (2391 views)
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Re: WifiInfo [In reply to]

Tim Teulings wrote:
>> Ideally a network with a signal strength in excess of some threshold, as
>> it seems anything below about 25% signal strength never connects.
>
> I already did the necessary changes. Expect a binary release (which
> needs some testing) hopefully within the next 2 weeks...

Great. Post a link to a private repository or deb file when its ready
and I'll try it out.

I've since installed WifiInfo and see it has a "scan for networks"
screen. A few questions:

On the scan for networks tab there is a checkbox to enable scanning.
Why? Is that to conserve resources when the application is minimized?
Does it continue scanning even when that tab isn't active?

On the main tab there is a slider to select poll frequency. Does that
affect the network scanning, or just the update of information on the
current network?

-Tom
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rael at edge

Aug 7, 2009, 12:06 PM

Post #8 of 8 (2402 views)
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Re: WifiInfo [In reply to]

Hello!

> A few questions:

> On the scan for networks tab there is a checkbox to enable scanning. Why?
> Is that to conserve resources when the application is minimized? Does it
> continue scanning even when that tab isn't active?

It seems like there polling of the OS daemon can crash the daemon (no
connection possible anymore), requiring a reboot (see desciption on the
download page!), so it must be explicitely activated. Polling also drains
the battery, should another reason to not activate it by default. WifiInfo
currently does not stop if the screen blanker kicks in (but its is on my
list of planed improvements). However for wardriving this should be
configurable :-)

Note that WifiInfo uses a undocumented OS interface (DBus interface to the
wlan handling daemon). However using this interface is the only way to get
the list. Directly polling the kernel requires root access and interacts
with the OS daemon in a way that it gets is faster and more definitely nuts
(this is likely also the reason why there is no clean port of kismet and
other tools. AFAIK you would have to stop and restart after use the network
handling stuff of the OS). The poll interval for the scna list is hard wired
for this reason since reducing the poll interval would increase the crash
likelyness.

It would be nice if fremantle would contain a documented interface for this.
If not, it would be nice if the current interface is at least kept ;-)

> On the main tab there is a slider to select poll frequency. Does that
> affect the network scanning, or just the update of information on the
> current network?

This only affects the polling of the current network connection. In the next
version the slider will move into a configuration dialog (under fremantle
slider are bigger and there is not enough space for it on the tab rider).

--
Gru�...
Tim.
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