[MLB-WIRELESS] General Stumbling Query

[Ryan Abbenhuys]

Actually i'm pretty sure Netstumbler doesn't send out anything.

AP's and cards in Ad-Hoc mode actually send out SSID beacons at set
intervals.  I think netstumbler just passively listens for all the beacons
it can find.

>Hi Alex and Melbwireless,
>
>To the best of my knowledge, Netstumbler sends out a "hey, are there any
APs
>out there" message, and picks up on any responses.  This'll get APs, and
>ad-hoc nodes.  Netstumbler doesn't actually see/display the traffic
between
>the AP and clients.
>
>On Linux/Unix, there is a program called "Kismet" that passively monitors
>traffic.  It _doesn't_ send out anything to provoke a response, but
monitors
>everything passing by.  Having said that, it tends to pick up most APs by
>seeing their "beacon" frames which they send out advertising their
presence.
>
>I believe that APs can be set to not respond to the requests that
>Netstumbler sends out, as well as disable the beacon frame thing, but
since
>Kismet puts the wireless network card into "promiscuous" mode and gathers
>all the traffic that goes past, as soon as an AP is in use you discover
the
>APs, the clients, as well as being able to see the non-encrypted traffic
>itself that goes between them.
>
>>From my experience, Kismet finds a lot more APs too. :)
>
>I believe that one of the melbourne wireless members was running kismet on
>one of his machines, and you could ssh into it, and play with it.  I'm not
>sure if that's still going or not.
>
>SStteevvee.
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: Alexander Cohen
>To: Melbwireless
>Sent: Monday, June 16, 2003 1:51 PM
>Subject: [MLB-WIRELESS] General Stumbling Query
>
>
>Ok just a quick question about 802.11b. I don't know the low level
behaviour
>of this protocol much so I just want confirmation that to successfully
>stumble a network you need traffic going both ways? Ie you can't just
>receive packets for netstumbler to pick it up and display its information,
>data must be transmitted by the stumbler to the AP (or adhoc nodes) to
>request that information?
>
>    --- Alex
>
>
>
>
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