net.stumbler

On 9 Aug 2006 20:11:06 -0700, "Vinnie" wrote in :

John Navas ha scritto:

Thanks, however i asked for a tutorial not really for the faqs. Vinnie

Not being sarcastic, but have you tried the help file that comes with it? I've never seen a tutorial for it.

Louie Gainesville, FL

There isn't a tutorial. The program's function is pretty clear. It sniffs the airwaves and shows you what it finds. The netstumbler website, it's docs and forum, are about all that exists to cover it. And they're pretty much sufficient. It might be fair to say that netstumbler isn't something 'mere mortals' are ever going to need bothering with. As a result there's not a 'netstumbler for dummies' resource.

-Bill Kearney

"Bill Kearney" hath wroth:

Some comments and corrections:

1. There is not Netstumbler for Dummies, but there is: "Hacking Wireless Networks For Dummies" |
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   which has a chapter on wardriving which includes Netstumbler. See the index entry under "Netstumbler" at: |
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2. Netstumbler does NOT "sniff the airwaves". It's an active scanner, not a passive sniffer. It xmits a "probe request frame" and listens for a "probe response frame". Kismet is an example of a passive sniffer.

It's also a question of getting the right card (with supported chipset) and driver.

For Windows, a good passive monitor is Commview for WiFi from Tamosoft. Commview sniffs 802.11a/b/g wireless networks.

You can download a 30 evaluation of their latest version from the Tamosoft site. They upgrade so often that you never reach the 30 day limit.

Apparently, Netstumbler cannot do passiv monitoring at all, even with a card that can be set to passiv mode. So what it's good for beats me. You get the same functions in almost all WiFi clients, that come with a WiFi card.

On Mon, 14 Aug 2006 15:37:12 +0200, snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com (Axel Hammerschmidt) wrote in :

As good as ThinkPad (ThinkVantage) Wi-Fi software is, there are still some things that Network Stumbler is good for; e.g., filtering, scripting and logging.

Most clients don't track multiple networks and keep a running chart of the signal strengths. If you're trying to determine antenna alignments and such, or find multiple access points using netstumbler is QUITE a bit more useful than the supplied wifi client. It's quite handy. kismet, in the hands of someone aware of what they're doing, has a greater range of features.

I thought it handled most of them as NDIS. Netstumbler didn't support some of my cards in the earlier version, but they all seem to work as NDIS in the version I have now.

Some other free add-on clients provide some of the functionality. I like the Boingo client for just seeing what's there.

Netstumbler allows information gathering which can be tied to a GPS for later mapping and examination.

snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com (Axel Hammerschmidt) hath wroth:

Netstumbler works with anything that has an NDIS 5.1 driver.

$200 to $500 per license.

Cute. I like that.

Not so. The common Windoze driver does not support the promiscuous or monitor mode. The result is that Windoze can only monitor it's own packets. Most Linux drivers support these modes, allowing passive sniffers to work and monitor all packets. There are companies that have written their own promiscuous Windoze drivers for specific cards.

Well, the above mentioned Commview comes with at least one Windows driver that does support promiscuous or monitor mode. The one for Atheros 500x chipsets. That's the one I use for passiv 802.11a/b/g scanning. There are others there too.

And Broadcom has released a Windows driver (beta) that can be downloaded from the Wildpackets site that will support promiscuous or monitor mode with the popular F5D7010 PC Card wireless card. This is one of the Windows drivers you can use with airodump-ng for Windows.

Even Apples Airport Extreme cards can now be switched into monitor mode with late versions of Kismac. They just kept working at it and found a solution.