WEP/WPA - how to tell which one

is there a monitor - like Netstumbler - that can report back on what encryption type is being used ? ie - we can see an AP on a site survey, but want to log what encryption it is using.... and most tools just report everything as WEP.

Reply to
ps56k
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WiFi-Hopper shows the encryption type:

The free version doesn't have the connection manager, but everything else works.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

tnx - found some other threads that mentioned it - downloaded, and will try it out tomorrow .

Reply to
ps56k

The down side with WiFiHopper is that it installs a network driver shim, which seems to screw up other sniffers. I haven't done much testing or tinkering. The problems seem to go away when I disable the shim, but I don't recall for sure. Just a warning if you run into problems.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

For ages I have been blaming XP updates for the deterioration in Netstumbler performance as both Inssider and WiFiHopper both report the same information without any problems. After reading your post I uninstalled all 3 programs, checked the windows/sys32 was clear of anything connected to them and reinstalled Netstumbler and still have the same problem of it reporting only half of the AP's and giving only the MAC address instead of the SSID for some of those it sees. I have decided to give up on Netstumbler on this XP SP2 machine and stick with Inssider and Wifihopper. I have been looking at some widgets for Vista this morning and while having a browse on the Xirrus website I notice they have a new wifi tool called "Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector"

It seems to work quite well but it requires a bit more play before I decide whether I will keep it.

Reply to
LR

I once posted a list of possible Netstumbler replacements in another newsgroup:

Yep. If I want to seem more radios, I use Kismet, which also picks up wireless clients. Using a Linux liveCD, I can usually see more AP's than with Netstumbler on the exact same machine. Weird.

Try a Linux LiveCD setup for sniffing:

Version 3 final works well. I haven't tried Version 4 beta yet.

854MBytes to download. Ugh.
Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Don't bother, I gave the 4 beta a try last weekend and wasn't impressed from the wireless aspect. I still use the ver.2 as well as ver.3 but I have never been able to get "wicrawl" to accurately report the channels although "Midnight Research" say it was a known bug and was supposedly fixed.

Reply to
LR

Should have added that when running the 4 beta and using Kismet I get a third of the AP's showing compared to running kismet in Ubuntu using the same RT2500 Chipset wireless card.

Reply to
LR

I will apologise for not reading all your post before replying. With regards to "Vistumbler" as my vista machine is running AVG8 there is a problem whereby AVG flags newer versions of the "vistumbler.exe" file as a "worm/AUTOIT.PKW" and neither AVG nor the authors of vistumbler have resolved this issue. While it is possible to disable the resident shield, then install Vistumbler and then create exception paths I don't really consider it worthwhile. I do have a version of Vistumbler installed which has no problems with AVG and it is the 7.43 beta version.

Reply to
LR

Congratulations. You're developing my bad habits. Hopefully, it's not contageous.

Yeah, I saw that. I don't recall the version. I have to keep fishing it out of the virus vault. I'm kinda used to it. Run the scan and undo the damage. My other scanners (SuperAntiSpyware and Malwarebytes) don't have the problem. Mostly, I do my sniffing from the command line. netsh wlan show networks mode=bssid

That's old. Current version is 9.0. My Vista laptop is out on loan to convince a customer that they don't want Vista. So far, it's working. I just went through the version history:

No mention of virus problems. I use AVG 8.0 but I don't recall seeing this problem. Thanks for the warning.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

I decided to try all the versions again this morning and had no problems up to ver 8.1. However installing ver 9 causes avg8 to detect the worm. Today is the first time I have noticed on the install that it says that an update has been detected and would you like to install it, I have evidently always considered this to be a good idea and installed it. If you don't agree to the update then AVG8 does not detect a worm, however if you then use the check for updates and then download the update a worm will be detected. When I run ver 9 it works OK apart from the fact I get a connection nag screen even though I am connected to network. There is a ver 9-1_b3 which also has the worm problem.

Reply to
LR

Having a browse on dslreports today they mentioned that there was a new version of Inssider that now has a channel display. It certainly gives you a better idea of whether nearby AP's may cause interference. Although it only shows 11 channels on the scale it does cover the full range.

Reply to
LR

Further to this, AVG8.5 is now out so I decided to try this and yet again if the update for ver9 of Vistumbler is installed then AVG8.5 detects vistumbler.exe as a worm and also detects a worm in the temp/internet files. This time I also installed Avira and Clamwin and scanned the Vistumbler files, neither of these show a worm however both of these have access to vistumbler.exe denied so there is definitely something odd about the update files.

Reply to
LR

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