Kismet can be used to identify and audit wireless networks and their configuration. Scans wireless encryption levels for a given AP.Easy detection of Wireless clients and access points.Various plug-ins even allow you to detect cordless telephones and Bluetooth! Main features: Believe it or not, Kismet also supports Intrusion Detection System (IDS) capabilities. Kismet will detect these probes and display a “Hidden Network.”īy identifying networks in range, Kismet will display the AP, its MAC address (BSSID), the SSID (network name), the channel in use, encryption type, the number of packets transmitting on the network, the data the network was last seen, and even the MAC addresses of clients associated to a particular AP. Technically, networks that hide their existence do still send out broadcasts of their network however, the SSID is blanked out. This allows Kismet to identify all wireless networks in range. The wireless interface you choose to use can’t be associated with any Access Point (AP) while Kismet is in use and, as a result, the user cannot connect to a network, but can listen for all probes and 802.11 management frames. Unlike other wireless sniffing programs, such as NetStumbler, Kismet is a “passive” sniffer, hence the need for Monitor mode. It does this by “channel-hopping,” which is a process of scanning each channel in the 2.4 GHz frequency band. FeaturesĪs a packet sniffer, Kismet has the ability to detect networks, even networks purposely hiding their existence by disabling the broadcast of their SSID. However, I won’t display anybody’s WEP or WPS networks since they are very vulnerable to attack. To be honest, anyone can open up their laptop and find the same information. You may be wondering if it’s okay to display the SSIDs and BSSIDs of other networks. Kismet Wireless runs natively in Windows, Linux and BSD operating systems (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and MacOS). Using it in sniffing mode allows you to work with wireless networks such as 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, and 802.11n. It’s compatible with almost any kind of wireless card. Kismet Wireless is a multi-platform free Wireless LAN analyzer, sniffer and IDS (intrusion detection system).

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