Kismet

What is Kismet?

Kismet is an 802.11 layer2 wireless network detector, sniffer, and intrusion detection system. Kismet will work with any wireless card which supports raw monitoring (rfmon) mode, and (with appropriate hardware) can sniff 802.11b, 802.11a, 802.11g, and 802.11n traffic. Kismet also supports plugins which allow sniffing other media such as DECT.

Kismet identifies networks by passively collecting packets and detecting standard named networks, detecting (and given time, decloaking) hidden networks, and infering the presence of nonbeaconing networks via data traffic.

Features

802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11a, 802.11n sniffing

Standard PCAP file logging (Wireshark, Tcpdump, etc)

Client/Server modular architecture

Multi-card and channel hopping support 

Runtime WEP decoding

Tun/Tap virtual network interface drivers for realtime export of packets 

Hidden SSID decloaking

Distributed remote sniffing with Kismet drones

XML logging for integration with other tools 

Linux, OSX, Windows, and BSD support (devices and drivers permitting)