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Kismet Readme
Kismet 2010-07-R1
Mike Kershaw
http://www.kismetwireless.net
1. What is Kismet
2. Upgrading from earlier versions
3. Quick start
4. Suidroot & security
5. Capture sources
6. Caveats & quirks for specific drivers
7. Supported capture sources
8. Plugins
9. GPS
10. Logging
11. Filtering
12. Alerts & IDS
13. Server configuration options
14. Kismet UI
15. Kismet drones
16. Talking to Kismet
17. Troubleshooting
18. Frequently asked questions
1. What is Kismet
Kismet is an 802.11 wireless network detector, sniffer, and intrusion

detection system. Kismet will work with any wireless card which
supports raw monitoring mode, and can sniff 802.11b, 802.11a, 802.11g,
and 802.11n traffic (devices and drivers permitting).
Kismet also sports a plugin architecture allowing for additional

non-802.11 protocols to be decoded.
Kismet identifies networks by passively collecting packets and detecting

networks, which allows it to detect (and given time, expose the names
of) hidden networks and the presence of non-beaconing networks via data
traffic.
2a. Upgrading from recent versions

2009-06-R1 has changed some basic behavior when using multi-vap capable
devices (ie, modern in-kernel Linux drivers). Whenever possible, it
will create a new VAP and reconfigure it, instead of modifying the
existing interface. To preserve the old behavior, specify
'forcevap=false' on the source line.
2b. Upgrading from Kismet-old versions
This release marks a MAJOR change in how Kismet works and is configured.
While many aspects are similar, many others (the client, configuring
sources and channels, etc) are very different.
To take advantage of the new features, replace your existing

configuration files with the latest configuration data.
Most notably:
* Sources are defined differently. See the "Capture Sources" section.
* All UI configuration is handled inside the Kismet client and stored
in the users home directory in ~/.kismet/kismet_ui.conf
* Most situations which were previously fatal conditions which caused
Kismet to exit can now be recovered from.
* New filtering options
* New alert options
* Completely new UI
* Revamped network protocol
* Significantly less CPU used for high numbers of networks
* Plugins
While this release breaks almost everything from previous releases, it

opens the door for smoother upgrades and major feature enhancements.
3. Quick start
PLEASE read the full manual, but for the impatient, here is the BARE
MINIMUM needed to get Kismet working:
* Download Kismet from http://www.kismetwireless.net/download.shtml

* Run "./configure". Pay attention to the output! If Kismet cannot
find all the headers and libraries it needs, major functionality may
be missing. Most notably, compiling Kismet yourself will require
the development packages and headers, usually called foo-dev or
foo-devel.
* Make sure that all the functionality you need was enabled properly in
configure. Almost all users will need pcap and libnl support for
proper operation.
* Compile Kismet with "make".
* Install Kismet with either "make install" or "make suidinstall".
YOU MUST READ THE "SUID INSTALLATION & SECURITY" SECTION OF THE
README OR YOUR SYSTEM MAY BE INSECURE.
* If you have installed Kismet as suid-root, add your user to the
"kismet" group
* Run "kismet". If you did not install Kismet with suid-root support,
you need to start it as root in nearly all situations. This is not
recommended as it is less secure than privsep mode, where packet
processing is segregated from admin rights.
* When prompted to start the Kismet server, choose "Yes"
* When prompted to add a capture interface, add your wireless interface.
In nearly all cases, Kismet will autodetect the device type and
supported channels. If it does not, you will have to manually define
the capture type (as explained later in this README)
* Logs will be stored in the directory you started Kismet from, unless
changed via the "logprefix" config file or "--log-prefix" startup
option.
* READ THE REST OF THIS README. Kismet has a lot of features and a lot
of configuration options, to get the most out of it you should read
all of the documentation.
3b. Windows quick start
* Note, at the time of this writing, the updated CACE install is not yet
* available, so users wishing to take advantage of the newcore
* functionality will need to build Kismet themselves in Cygwin
Using the CACE Package:
* Download the Win32/Cygwin installer created by CACE and linked from

the download page (http://www.kismetwireless.net/download.shtml
* Run the installer
* Start Kismet
* Pick your AirPcap or Kismet Drone sources
* READ THE READ OF THIS README.
Compiling it yourself:
* Download the Cygwin setup tool (http://www.cygwin.org)

* Install Cygwin with make, GCC, libncurses, libncurses-dev
* Download the Airpcap_Devpack from CACE Support
* Put Airpcap_Devpack and Libpcap_Devpack in the kismet source directory
* Run "./configure"
* Install Kismet with "make install"
NOTE: KISMET WILL **ONLY** WORK WITH THE CACE AIRPCAP DEVICE, SAVED PCAP
FILES, -OR- REMOTE KISMET DRONES RUNNING ON A SUPPORTED PLATFORM. NO
OTHER HARDWARE IS SUPPORTED IN WINDOWS, PERIOD. WINDOWS DRIVERS DO NOT
INCLUDE SUPPORT FOR WIFI MONITORING WHICH KISMET REQUIRES. THERE IS NO
WAY TO CHANGE THIS.
3c. OSX/Darwin quick start

* Run "./configure". Pay attention to the output! If Kismet cannot
find all the headers and libraries it needs, major functionality may
be missing. Notably, you may need to install libpcap manually.
The libpcap included with OSX does not support PPI logging. Kismet
will not be able to log to PPI correctly (so it will log 802.11
packets with no per-packet headers.)
Configure will automatically detect OSX and default to the group

"staff" for OSX suidinstall. This may be overridden with the
'--with-suidgroup' configure option.

* Install Kismet with either "make install" or "make suidinstall".
YOU MUST READ THE "SUID INSTALLATION & SECURITY" SECTION OF THE
README OR YOUR SYSTEM MAY BE VULNERABLE.
* If you have installed Kismet as suid-root, add your user to the
"staff" group if it is not already.
* Run "kismet". If you did not install Kismet with suid-root support,
you need to start it as root in nearly all situations. This is not
recommended as it is less secure than privsep mode, where packet
processing is segregated from admin rights.
* When prompted to start the Kismet server, choose "Yes"
* When prompted to add a capture interface, add your wireless interface.
In nearly all cases, Kismet will autodetect the device type and
supported channels. If it does not, you will have to manually define
the capture type (as explained later in this README)
For many Macs, this will be 'en1', however start a terminal and check
the output of "ifconfig -a".
The wireless interface must be enabled in the wireless control panel

for Kismet to work, otherwise it will not find any networks.
Kismet currently ONLY works with the Airport wireless devices, NOT USB
WIRELESS DEVICES.
* Logs will be stored in the directory you started Kismet from, unless
changed via the "logprefix" config file or "--log-prefix" startup
option.
* READ THE REST OF THIS README
4. Suidroot & Security
In order to configure the wireless card for monitor mode and start
capturing packets, Kismet needs root access. There are two ways to
accomplish this: Start Kismet as root, or install it so that the
control components are set to start as root.
Starting Kismet as root means that Kismet will continue running as root.
In theory this presents no additional risk, however if there are any
flaws in the Kismet packet dissection code then it may be possible for a
malicious packet to cause code execution as root. Additionally,
third-party plugins will run as root, and may not be secure.
Installing Kismet as suid-root creates a limited-functionality binary

(kismet_capture) which is only launchable by members of the "kismet"
group. Kismet uses this to configure cards and control the channels,
while packet decoding happens only in the user component, significantly
limiting the attack surface.
Distributions are strongly encouraged to use this method as it allows

standard group controls for what users can use Kismet to change card
states.
Embedded systems typically have much less storage space and RAM, and
often do not enforce user/root separation as strictly due to these
limitations. On embedded systems, Kismet may be installed without the
kismet_capture binary and run in root mode only, however the above
risks still apply.
Under no situation should the kismet_server binary itself be set

suidroot as this will bypass any security checks.
5. Capture sources
All packets in Kismet come from a capture source. Capture sources are
typically network cards on the local system, however they can also be a
previously recorded file or a remote capture system running a Kismet
drone.
Kismet will, in most cases, autodetect the driver and supported channels
for a capture source given only the network interface. For many users
this will be sufficient, however many expanded options are available for
capture sources.
Kismet captures packets at the 802.11 layer. This requires changing the
mode of the network interface, making it unavailable for normal use. In
most cases it is not possible to remain associated to a wireless network
while running Kismet on the same interface.
Capture sources may be added via the Kismet UI under the "Add Source"
option, in which case the options may be added under the "Options:"
field, comma separated. They may also be defined in the kismet.conf
configuration file as the "ncsource=" option, such as:
ncsource=wlan0:option1=foo,option2=bar
Source options:
name=foo Custom name for the source (otherwise it will be
named the same as the capture interface). This is
completely arbitrary and meaningful only to the
user.
type=foo Sources which can not autodetect the type must have
the type specified. This is rarely necessary.
Additional information on supported source types
follows.
uuid=foo Users wishing a static unique identifier on sources
may specify one here. This is not necessary for
most users. UUID is of the format:
XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX
hop=true|false Disable channel hopping on this source. Default
behavior is for channel sources to hop channels to
cover the entire spectrum.
velocity=# Channel hop velocity (number of channels per
second), Kismet can hop 1-10 channels per second.
dwell=# Channel dwell time, the number of seconds Kismet
will wait on each channel. If hopping is enabled
and a channel dwell time is specified, Kismet will
hop at N seconds per channel, instead of N channels
per second.
channellist=name Use an alternate channel list instead of the
autodetected list of channels supported by this
interface. The channellist must be defined.
split=true|false When multiple sources use the same channel list
(either autodetected or by the channellist= option)
Kismet will split them so that they do not cover the
same channels at the same time. Sources can be
forced to ignore this and begin hopping at the
beginning of the channel list regardless of overlap.
retry=true|false Kismet will attempt to re-open a capture source
which has encountered an error. This behavior can
be disabled if the user wants the source to remain
closed.
vap=interface Create a secondary named interface for capture
instead of trying to change the mode of the
existing interface. This is primarily only for use
by drivers using the mac80211 interface under
Linux. Users wishing to do Kismet+Managed or
Kismet+Injection should create a vap.
forcevap=t|f True/False. Force creation of a monitor-mode VAP
when possible (all Linux mac80211 based drivers
support this). Default is "true", a VAP will be
made of the name 'mon', ie 'wlan0mon',
'wlan1mon' and capture will be done with this VAP.
This behavior can be forced OFF with
'forcevap=false'.
wpa_scan=time When using a mac80211 VAP, Kismet can use
wpa_supplicant on a managed interface to trigger
hardware assisted scans, enabling some view of the
rest of the spectrum without significantly
disrupting operation of the managed VAP. Suggested
time for scan intervals is 15 seconds.
validatefcs=t|f True/False. Kismet normally will not bother trying
to validate the FCS checksum of incoming packets
because most drivers only report valid frames in
the first place. Packet sources which report
invalid frames by default will enable this option
automatically. If the drivers have been manually
configured to report invalid packets, this should
be specified to prevent Kismet from processing
broken packets.
fcs=true|false Force handling of FCS bytes on a packet source.
Default is "false", which implies "native FCS
handling". Packet sources which include per-packet
headers like radiotap or PPI will ignore this value
as the FCS is encoded in the radio header. Packet
sources such as pcapfile, reading raw 802.11 pcap
files with no headers, may need this turned on for
proper behavior.
fcsfail=true Force a mac80211 VAP to report packets with a known
bad FCS (packet checksum). This is only available
on Linux and only when using mac80211 drivers.
This MUST come after a 'vap=' option or it will be
ignored. Enabling 'fcsfail' will enable
'validatefcs' automatically. The 'fcsfail' option
should only be enabled when logging to PPI; Logging
to normal PCAP will not preserve the FCS data and
will produce unreadable output.
WARNING: With some driver versions, enabling this
seems to cause kernel OOPS warnings and the
interface will become unresponsive if capture is
stopped and resume. This option is for specific
expert use only, when in doubt, leave it alone.
plcpfail=true Force a mac80211 VAP to report packets which do not
pass the PLCP check (if possible on that
interface). The same warnings and conditions as
'fcsfail' apply. This option is for specific,
expert use only, when in doubt, leave it alone.
Example sources (these are given as config file parameters, however they
will work equally well as command-line options, ie "-c wlan0"):
Capture on wlan0, channel 6, don't channel hop
ncsource=wlan0:hop=false,channel=6
Capture on wlan0, 802.11b channels only even if it supports 5GHz

ncsource=wlan0:channellist=IEEE80211b
Create a VAP on wlan0 named wlan0mon and use wpa_supplicant to

give us some view of other channels, while remaining associated to a
network:
ncsource=wlan0:vap=wlan0mon,hop=false,wpa_scan=15
Read from a pre-recorded pcap file:

ncsource=/home/foo/old.pcap
Capture using the first Airpcap device on Windows

ncsource=airpcap
Capture using a remote capture drone

ncsource=drone:host=10.10.100.2,port=2502
Channel lists:
Channel lists control the channels and patterns hopped to by capture

sources in Kismet, when the channels can not be autodetected (or when
the user wishes to override them for some reason). The default channel
lists (IEEE80211b, IEEE80211a, and IEEE80211ab) are used only when a
channel list is not provided by the driver, so should not be changed in
most cases.
When the channel list is automatically created from the channels

supported by the driver, the preferredchannels= option will control
which channels are weighted for extra time. By setting this to channels
known to be defaults (such as 1, 6, 11) or channels with known networks
of interest (such as in a stationary install), Kismet will devote more
time to those channels to gather more information. For more complex
channel timing, keep reading about how channel lists work.
Channels can typically be specified as IEEE channels (11, 36, etc)

or as frequencies (2401, 5200) however some platforms and drivers may
not support specifying channels or frequencies out of the IEEE standard
range.
channellist=name:channel,channel,channel
Additionally, individual channels in the list can be weighted so that

more time is spent on them; for a weighting value of 3, 3x more time is
spent on that channel.
channellist=foo:1:3,6:3,11:3,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10
Up to 256 channels may be specified in a channel list. For greater

numbers of channels, a range must be specified.
Ranges may consist of channels or of frequencies.
channellist=name:range-[start]-[end]-[overlap]-[iteration]
Channels between start and end, at a given iteration. Kismet will not hop
directly between channels that overlap.
channellist=foo:range-1-11-3-1
A similar range using frequencies (802.11 2.4GHz channels are ~20MHz

wide; technically 22 but 20 suffices, and 5 MHz apart).
channellist=foo:range-2412-2462-20-5
Ranges are NOT split between sources. Multiple sources hopping on the
same channel list which includes a range will not split the expanded
range - in other words, channel ranges are treated as a single channel
entry.
Multiple ranges can be specified in a single channel list, separated by

commas. They may also be mixed with channels:
channellist=foo:range-1-11-3-1,36,52
6. Caveats and quirks for specific drivers:
Mac80211 General (Linux):
At the time of this release, the mac80211 drivers in Linux are

undergoing significant development, which means at any given time they
can exhibit extremely odd behavior or be outright broken. Users are
encouraged to upgrade to the latest kernel, and to consider installing
the compat-wireless backport package, if problems are experienced.
Madwifi (Linux):
Madwifi-ng has been largely deprecated by ath5k/ath9k for normal
usage. These drivers support multi-vap more cleanly via the mac80211
layer and do not, typically, have the same problems historically
present in madwifi.
Madwifi-ng sources can be specified as either the VAP (ath0, mon0,

etc) or as the control interface (wifi0, wifi1). However, IF THE
CONTROL INTERFACE IS SPECIFIED, Kismet cannot extract the list of
supported channels, and will default to IEEE80211b channels.
Madwifi-ng continues to have problems with multi-vap and initial vap

creation. It is recommended that the initial VAP creation be turned off
by the module parameter "autocreate=none" when loading ath_pci. If the
madwifi monitor vap stops reporting packets soon after being created,
this is often the cause.
Combining managed and monitor VAPs appears to still not work well.
RT28xx (Linux)
There are 2 drivers for the RT28xx chipsets. The in-kernel driver
available as of Linux-2.6.31 works properly with Kismet. This is by
far the preferred driver to use. Be sure to enable the RT28xx driver
in the wireless drivers section, NOT the staging driver. The staging
driver is not mac80211 based and will not necessarily behave.
The out-of-kernel driver does not conform to mac80211 controls.

This driver also cannot be auto-detected (they don't provide a valid
identifier in /sys) so the driver type mus be manually specified with
'type=rt2870sta' on the source line.
This driver defaults to the name 'rausbX' which exposes a bug in some
versions of libpcap and may require the device be renamed (See
'Troubleshooting' section)
rt73-k2wrlz (Linux)
An out-of-tree rt73 driver similar to rt2870sta. It may be necessary

to specify a type of 'rt73' manually when using this driver.
This driver defaults to the name 'rausbX' which exposes a bug in some
versions of libpcap and may require the device be renamed (See
'Troubleshooting' section)
WL (Linux, Intel)
Broadcom has released a binary version of their drivers called WL.

These drivers are incapable of monitor mode, and cannot be used with
Kismet. Kismet will attempt to autodetect them and report this to the
user. Users of Broadcom cards should use the b43 or b43xx in-kernel
drivers.
OTUS (Linux)
Atheros released a driver for the 802.11n USB devices; however, this
does not have support for monitor mode and cannot be used with Kismet.
The ar9170 driver project is providing mac80211 kernel support for
this card, and works with Kismet. ar9170 has been merged with the
wireless-git development kernel and should be present in the
compat-wireless packages.
Nokia ITT (Linux)

For any chance of Kismet working on the Nokia ITT, the scan interval
must be set to zero in the Nokia system control panel, connectivity
section. It should be disconnected from any network, but wireless
must be turned on.
The Nokia drivers often return FCS-invalid packets. The Nokia source
line should include 'fcs=true,validatefcs=true' to prevent these from
creating multiple false networks out of invalid packets.
The Nokia device does not autodetect properly, a driver type of

'nokia770', 'nokia800', 'nokia810', or 'nokiaitt' must be set.
'nokiaitt' is a generic source which should work on any Nokia ITT
tablet.
Orinoco (Linux)
Due to problems in monitor mode with newer firmwares, the Orinoco kernel
drivers have disabled monitor mode for newer/"modern" firmware versions
in the Orinoco cards.
Kismet will attempt to use the device, but warn the user that it will
probably fail. Monitor support can be forced on in the module via the
module parameter "force_monitor=1" when loading orinoco.ko.
For non-hermes chipsets like prism2, use hostap (also in the kernel).
NDISWrapper (Linux)
The NDIS-Wrapper driver loads Windows drivers into the Linux network
stack. These drivers are not capable of monitor mode, and will not
work with Kismet.
Note: The rndis drivers are NOT the same as ndiswrapper. rndis
drivers are for a specific USB chipset and are not related to
ndiswrapper, rndis will work.
BSD (BSD Generic)
Cards which work under the generic BSD framework for monitor mode with
radiotap headers should work with Kismet via the source types
"radiotap_bsd_ag", "radiotap_bsd_a", "radiotap_bsd_g", and
"radiotap_bsd". Channel detection and device type autodetection are
currently not supported.
ncsource=wl0:type=radiotap_bsd_ag
Windows (Generic)
ONLY THE AIRPCAP DEVICE IS SUPPORTED UNDER WINDOWS. THIS IS A

SPECIFIC HARDWARE DEVICE MADE BY CACE TECHNOLOGIES. IF YOU DID NOT GO
AND BUY AN AIRPCAP SPECIFICALLY FOR CAPTURING DATA, YOU DO NOT HAVE ONE,
AND THIS WILL NOT WORK.
The Airpcap has monitor mode drivers with a *public* interface for
controlling them. This is the only device Kismet can capture packets
from on Windows.
AirPcap (Windows)
By default Kismet will open the first Airpcap device found. Multiple
devices can be opened by using the full named interface, which can be
found in the AirPcap tools but follows the pattern \\.\airpcapXX ; The
first device is \\.\airpcap00, the second is \\.\airpcap01, and so on.
USB Devices (OSX)
Only devices using the Airport IOKit drivers are supported on OSX.
USB devices are, in general, not supported because the drivers lack
monitor mode or a method to set the channel.
7. Supported capture source types
Capture source types are only required in specific situations where

Kismet cannot detect the capture source type automatically.
Linux Capture Sources:
All modern drivers on Linux use the mac80211 driver framework. Kismet
will auto-detect any driver using this framework. A generic source
type 'mac80211' can be used for forcing a type, however it is not
strictly useful to do so.
adm8211 Kernel adm8211 driver

acx100 Kernel acx100 driver
hostap Kernel prism2 driver
ipw2100 Kernel Intel 2100 driver
ipw3945 Kernel intel 3945 driver
mac80211 Generic mac80211 catch-all source for any mac80211
drivers.
madwifi Madwifi/Madwifi-ng
madwifi_a Alias for madwifi, default 802.11a channels
madwifi_b Alias for madwifi, default 802.11b/g channels
madwifi_g Alias for madwifi, default 802.11b/g channels
madwifi_ag Alias for madwifi, default 802.11abg channels
nokia770 Conexant-based driver in Nokia Maemo tablets
nokia800 Alias for nokia770
nokia810 Alias for nokia770
nokiaitt Alias for nokia770
pcapfile Pcap-formatted previously recorded file

rt2870sta Out-of-kernel/Staging rt2870 11n driver (use
in-kernel instead)
wl12xx Patched wl12xx drivers for the N900, must use
patched drivers from http://david.gnedt.eu/blog/,
otherwise autodetected.
drone Remote Kismet packet capture, source options
"host=..." and "port=..." are required.
ncsource=drone:host=localhost,port=2502
BSD Capture Sources:
Currently, the BSD packet capture sources do not support autodetection

or channel detection.
Capture on BSD should work with any driver which supports monitor mode
and which uses the standard BSD IOCTLs to set the mode and channel.
Patches/Additional BSD support welcome.
radiotap_bsd Generic BSD capture source, default 802.11b/g channels

radiotap_bsd_g Default 802.11b/g channels
radiotap_bsd_a Default 802.11a channels
radiotap_bsd_ag Default 802.11abg channels

Windows Capture Sources:
Currently ONLY THE AIRPCAP DEVICE, PCAP FILE, AND DRONES RUNNING ON A
SUPPORTED PLATFORM are supported under Windows. NO OTHER DEVICES CAN
BE USED FOR PACKET CAPTURE.
airpcap Airpcap generic source. Will autodetect the channel

ranges. Interface 'airpcap' will detect the first
airpcap device (ncsource=airpcap), interface paths
may be used to specify specific devices
(ncsource=\\.\airpcap01)
airpcap_ask List available sources and ask which one to use.
Should NOT be used when launched by the Kismet UI.

OSX/Macintosh Capture Sources:

darwin Any device controlled by the Airport IOKit drivers
under OSX. Default 802.11b/g channels.

8. Plugins
Kismet plugins can do almost anything that the native Kismet process can
do. This includes extending the logging capability, adding IDS alerts,
defining new capture sources (within some limitations), and adding new
features to the Kismet UI.
Plugins need access to the Kismet source (and configuration

information) to compile, and should ALWAYS be recompiled when the
Kismet version changes (for those using Kismet-SVN development code,
this may require rebuilding plugins every time a checkout is done).
Plugins bundled with Kismet (and third-party plugins extracted into the
Kismet source dir) can be built with 'make plugins' and installed with
'make plugins-install' or 'make plugins-userinstall'. These commands
will automatically configure the plugin to compile using the current
Kismet source directory, for third-party plugins compiled outside of the
tree (or for manually compiling plugins), the KIS_SRC_DIR variable must
be set or the symlinks to the Kismet source must be set up properly (see
the README for the plugin you are trying to compile for more
information).
Plugins for the Kismet server (capture and logging process) are loaded
from the system-wide plugin directory (/usr/local/lib/kismet/ by
default) or from the users Kismet settings directory
(~/.kismet/plugins).
When running Kismet with privilege separation enabled (installed

kismet_capture as root), plugins are only loaded by the Kismet server
process and not the root-level Kismet capture process, and plugins
cannot perform tasks that require root privileges.
When running Kismet without privilege separation (launching as root),

plugins run with root privileges. This is not recommended.
Server plugins are only loaded when kismet.conf contains:

allowplugins=true
Client plugins are loaded from the system-wide plugin directory
(/usr/local/lib/kismet_client by default) or from the users Kismet
settings directory (~/.kismet/client_plugins).
The Kismet UI provides mechanisms for loading plugins (and specifying

plugins to be loaded automatically on startup) via the Plugins menu item.
Once a Kismet UI plugin is loaded, it cannot be unloaded. To unload a

Kismet plugin, go to the Plugins window, configure the plugin to not
load on start, and restart Kismet. To configure plugin loading in the
UI, select the plugin (the list is automatically generated from plugins
installed in the system and user plugin directories) and press enter.
Plugins will be loaded when the plugin window is closed.
Kismet server plugins cannot currently be manipulated via the Kismet UI,
but loaded plugins will be displayed.
If a plugin causes startup problems (most likely because it was compiled

for a different Kismet binary), Kismet will exit and explain which
plugin caused the crash during startup. Plugins may also cause
instability during runtime; if runtime crashes occur while plugins are
loaded, remove them and re-test. Often, recompiling the plugins against
the running Kismet source will help resolve these issues.
9. GPS
Kismet can integrate with a GPS device to provide coordinates for

networks it has detected. These can be logged to the pcap file when PPI
logging is enabled, and to an XML file for processing with Kismap, included
with the Kismet source, as well as other third-party tools.
Kismet can use the GPS network daemon 'gpsd', or can parse NMEA directly
from the GPS unit.
The GPS is controlled with the Kismet server config, kismet.conf. For
using gpsd with gpsd running on the local system:
gps=true
gpstype=gpsd
gpshost=localhost:2947
gpsmodelock=false
gpsreconnect=true
By specifying gpsreconnect, if gpsd crashes or Kismet otherwises looses

its connection, it will be re-established. Gpsmodelock compensates for
certain broken GPS/GPSd combinations, where the GPS never reports a
valid lock. By forcing a gpsmodelock=true, Kismet assumes the GPS
always has a 2d lock.
For using a GPS device without gpsd:
gps=true
gpstype=serial
gpsdevice=/dev/ttyS0
gpsreconnect=true
The gpsdevice parameter should be set to the proper serial device for
your GPS. For USB GPS devices this will typically be /dev/ttyUSB0, and
for bluetooth devices this will often by /dev/rfcomm0 or similar. Check
the output of "dmesg" after plugging in your device.
Kismet cannot know the location of a network, it can only know the
location where it saw a signal. By circling the suspected location,
you can provide more GPS data for processing the network center point.
Kismet keeps running averages of the network location, however this is

not incredibly accurate, due to averaging and imprecision in
floating point math. For plotting network locations, the GPSXML file
should be used.
10. Logging
By default Kismet will log the pcap file, gps log, alerts, and network
log in XML and plaintext.
By default, Kismet will try to log to pcapfiles using the PPI per-packet
header. The PPI header is a well-documented header supported by
Wireshark and other tools, which can contain spectrum data, radio data
such as signal and noise levels, and GPS data.
PPI is only available with recent libpcap versions. When it is not

available, Kismet will fall back to standard 802.11 format with no extra
headers.
The pcap logging format is controlled by:

pcapdumpformat=ppi
or
pcapdumpformat=80211
The naming of logfiles is controlled by the "logtemplate" configuration

option. By default, Kismet logs in the directory it is started in
(unless modified with the "--log-prefix" option).
The following variables can be used in the logtemplate:

%p Prefix (as given by --log-prefix)
%n Logging name (as given by --log-title)
%d Starting date, Mmm-DD-YYYY
%D Starting date, YYYYMMDD
%t Starting time, HH-MM-SS
%i Incremental, in the case of multiple logs of the same name
%l Log type (pcapdump, netxml, etc)
%h Home directory of the user Kismet was started as
The default log template with a --log-prefix of /tmp and a --log-title

of Kismet would expand from:
logtemplate=%p%n-%D-%t-%i.%l
to (for example):
/tmp/Kismet-20090428-12-45-33-1.pcapdump
Nested directories may be used (for example, with a template of the form
"%p/%l/%D-%t"), however they must be created prior to starting Kismet,
Kismet will not create the directories itself.
Most users should never need to change the logtemplate, however the
option remains available. When changing the template, be sure to
include the "%p" prefix option in a logical location (ie, at the
beginning of the template) or else the --log-prefix argument will not
function as expected.
11. Filtering
Kismet supports basic filtering; networks can be excluded from tracking,

pcap logging, or general logging, based on BSSID, source, or destination
MAC addresses.
Filters, when enabled, are "positive-pass"; anything matched by the

filter will be allowed, and all other matches are excluded. To process
ONLY packets to or from the network with the BSSID AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF:
filter_tracker=BSSID(AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF)
This behavior can be inverted by using the '!' operator. To exclude

packets to or from the BSSID AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF:
filter_tracker=BSSID(!AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF)
Multiple MAC addresses can be stacked on the same filter line, to filter
two all packets from AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF and 00:11:22:33:44:55:
filter_tracker=BSSID(!AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF,!00:11:22:33:44:55)
MAC addresses may also be masked in a fashion similar to IP netmasks; to

process only networks of a single manufacturer:
filter_tracker=BSSID(AA:BB:CC:00:00:00/FF:FF:FF:00:00:00)
Similarly, SOURCE(...), DEST(...), and ANY(...) may be used to filter

packets. To process only packets FROM the MAC address
11:22:33:44:55:66:
filter_tracker=SOURCE(11:22:33:44:55:66)
12. Alerts & IDS
Kismet includes IDS functionality, providing a stateless and stateful

IDS for layer 2 and layer 3 wireless attacks. Kismet can alert on
fingerprints (specific single-packet attacks) and trends (unusual
probes, disassociation floods, etc).
Kismet can integrate with other tools using the tun/tap export to
provide a virtual network interface of wireless traffic; tools such as
Packet-o-Matic and Snort can use this exported data to perform
additional IDS functions.
Kismet as an IDS is most effective in a stationary (ie, non-wardriving)

setup, and for best results, a non-hopping source should be available on
the channels the primary networks are on. Kismet IDS functions CAN be
used in mobile or channel-hopping installations (and are turned on by
default) but accuracy may suffer.
Alerts are configured with the "alert=" configuration option in

kismet.conf, and have two time parameters: Throttle, and Burst. The
throttle option controls how many alerts are allowed total per time
unit, while the burst option controls how many alerts are allowed in a
row. For example:
alert=NETSTUMBLER,5/min,1/sec
Will allow 1 alert per second, at a maximum of 5 per minute.
Kismet supports the following alerts, where applicable the WVE (Wireless
Vulnerability and Exploits, http://www.wve.org) ID is included:
AIRJACKSSID Fingerprint Deprecated

The original 802.11 hacking tools, Airjack, set the initial SSID
to 'airjack' when starting up. This alert is no longer relevant
as the Airjack tools have long since been discontinued.
APSPOOF Fingerprint
A list of valid MAC addresses for a SSID may be given via the
'apspoof=' configuration file option. If a beacon or probe
response for that SSID is seen from a MAC address not in that
list, this alert will be raised. This can be used to detect
conflicting access points, spoofed access points, or attacks
such as Karma/Airbase which respond to all probe requests.
The 'apspoof=' configuration option can specific exact SSID

matches, regular expressions (if Kismet is compiled with PCRE
support), and single, multiple, or masked MAC addresses:
apspoof=Foo1:ssidregex="(?i:foobar)",validmacs=00:11:22:33:44:55
apspoof=Foo2:ssid="Foobar",
validmacs="00:11:22:33:44:55,AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF"
When multiple MAC addresses are specified, they should be

enclosed in quotes (as above).
For more information about forming PCRE-compatible regular

expressions, see the PCRE docs (man pcrepattern).
BSSTIMESTAMP Trend/Stateful
Invalid/Out-of-sequence BSS Timestamps can indicate AP spoofing.
APs with fluctuating BSS timestamps could be suffering an "evil
twin" spoofing attack, as many tools do not attempt to sync the
BSS timestamp at all, and the fine-grained nature of the BSS
timestamp field makes it difficult to spoof accurately. Some
APs may reset the BSS timestamp regularly, leading to a
false-positive.
References:
WVE-2005-0019
CHANCHANGE Trend/Stateful
A previously detected access point changing channels may
indicate a spoofing attack. By spoofing a legitimate AP on a
different channel, an attacker can lure clients to the spoofed
access point. An AP changing channel during normal operation
may indicate such an attack is in process, however centrally
managed networks may automatically change AP channels to
less-used areas of the spectrum.
References:
WVE-2005-0019
CRYPTODROP Trend/Stateful
Spoofing an AP with less-secure encryption options may fool
clients into connecting with compromised credentials. The only
situation in which an access point should reduce encryption
security is when the AP is reconfigured.
DEAUTHFLOOD Trend/Stateful
BCASTDISCON Trend/Stateful
By spoofing disassociate and deauthenticate packets an attacker
may disconnect clients from a network, causing a
denial-of-service which lasts only as long as the attacker is
able to send the packets.
References:
WVE-2005-0019, WVE-2005-0045, WVE-2005-0046, WVE-2005-0061
http://802.11ninja.net
http://home.jwu.edu/jwright/papers/l2-wlan-ids.pdf
DHCPCLIENTID Fingerprint
A client which sends a DHCP DISCOVER packet containing a
Client-ID tag (Tag 61) which doesn't match the source MAC of the
packet may be doing a DHCP denial-of-service to exhaust the DHCP
pool.
DHCPCONFLICT Trend/Stateful
Clients which receive a DHCP address and continue to use a
different IP address may indicate a misconfigured or spoofed
client.
DISASSOCTRAFFIC Trend/Stateful
A client which is disassociated from a network should not
immediately continue exchanging data. This can indicate a
spoofed client attempting to incorrectly inject data into a
network, or can indicate a client being the victim of a
denial-of-service attack.
DISCONCODEINVALID Fingerprint
DEAUTHCODEINVALID Fingerprint
The 802.11 specification defines valid reason codes for
disconnect and deauthenticate events. Various client and access
point drivers have been reported to improperly handle
invalid/undefined reason codes.
DHCPNAMECHANGE Trend/Stateful
DHCPOSCHANGE Trend/Stateful
The DHCP configuration protocol allows clients to optionally put
the hostname and DHCP client vendor/operating system in the DHCP
Discover packet. These values should only change if the client
has changed drastically (such as a dual-boot system). Changing
values can often indicate a client spoofing/MAC cloning attack.
LONGSSID Fingerprint
The 802.11 specification allows a maximum of 32 bytes for the
SSID. Over-sized SSIDs are indicative of an attack attempting
to exploit vulnerabilities in several drivers.
LUCENTTEST Fingerprint Deprecated

Old Lucent Orinoco cards in certain scanning test modes generate
identifiable packets.
MSFBCOMSSID Fingerprint
Some versions of the Windows Broadcom wireless drivers do not
properly handle SSID fields longer than the 802.11
specification, leading to system compromise and code execution.
This vulnerability is exploited by the Metasploit framework.
References:
WVE-2006-0071
MSFDLINKRATE Fingerprint
Some versions of the Windows D-Link wireless drivers do not
properly handle extremely long 802.11 valid rate fields, leading
to system compromise and code execution. This vulnerability is
exploited by the Metasploit framework.
References:
WVE-2006-0072
MSFNETGEARBEACON Fingerprint
Some versions of the Windows netgear wireless drivers do not
properly handle over-sized beacon frames, leading to system
compromise and code execution. This vulnerability is exploited
by the Metasploit framework.
NETSTUMBLER Fingerprint Deprecated

Older versions of Netstumbler (3.22, 3.23, 3.30) generate, in
certain conditions, specific packets.
NULLPROBERESP Fingerprint
Probe-response packets with a SSID IE tag component of length 0
can cause older cards (prism2, orinoco, airport-classic) to
fail.
References:
WVE-2005-0019
PROBENOJOIN Trend/Stateful
Active scanning tools such as Netstumbler constantly send
network discovery probes but never join any of the networks
which respond. This alert can cause excessive false positives
while channel hopping, and is disabled by default.
13. Other Configuration
Kismet is divided into two main processes: kismet_server and

kismet_client. The server portion (responsible for capture, logging,
and decoding) is controlled by kismet.conf (by default in
/usr/local/etc) and the client is configured via preferences options.
For the most part, Kismet can run with no additional configuration by
adding capture sources runtime with the UI, however for
standalone/headless operation or advanced configuration, users will want
to edit the config file.
The Kismet config is a plain text file with option=value pairs. Lines
beginning with # are considered comments and are ignored.
Most configuration options are self-explanatory or documented in the

config file itself.
By default Kismet only listens to the loopback interface on port 2501.

This may be changed:
listen=tcp://ip:port Define the IP and port Kismet listens on. By

default, for security reasons, Kismet will
listen only on 127.0.0.1, the loopback interface.
To listen on any interface, use the IP 0.0.0.0.
allowedhosts=... Comma-separated list of IP addresses allowed to
connect to the Kismet server. IP ranges may be
specified with netmasks (ie 10.10.10.0/24)
maxclients=N Maximum number of clients allowed to simultaneously
connect to the Kismet server.
maxbacklog=5000 Maximum number of backlogged "lines" the server
keeps for clients which are not keeping up
with the network protocol. This also affects
the amount of RAM potentially used by the
Kismet server process, and may need to be
lowered on extremely RAM-limited systems.
Kismet servers may also be configured to act as Kismet drones, exporting

a TCP stream of live packets:
dronelisten=.. Same as above, for drone capabilities

droneallowedhosts=.. ...
dronemaxclients=.. ...
droneringlen=65535 Equivalent of maxbacklog for Kismet clients,
maximum amount of space used for backlogged
packets as a drone. May be reduced on
extremely RAM-limited systems.
Kismet can export packets directly to other tools by creating a virtual
network interface (supported on Linux, minimal support on OSX and BSD
due to limited tuntap driver implementations on these platforms):
tuntap_export=true Enable tuntap export

tuntap_device=kistap0 Virtual network interface created
Kismet can decrypt WEP networks for which the WEP key is already known:
wepkey=bssid,hexkey
Only the hex key can be given, since there is no consistent method to
turn a pass-phrase into a hex key for WEP for different vendors.
Sound and speech can be generated by the Kismet server, however

typically this would be done by the Kismet UI instead. Sound is
disabled by default in the Kismet server:
enablesound=true|false Play sound

soundbin=... Path and options for sound player binary
sound=xxx,true|false Enable playing sound trigger xxx
enablespeech=true|false Speak
speechbin=... Text-to-Speech player
speechtype=raw|festival If using Festival (but NOT flite) speech
type must be set to 'festival', all other
tools should be set to 'raw'
speechencoding=... NATO, Spelling, Speech. Encoding of speech
fields for clarity, spell network SSIDs as
NATO, spelled-out letters, or speak them
normally.
speech=xxx,"format" Format of spoken strings, see the Kismet UI
section for more information on formatting
of speech strings.
The OUI file (used by Kismet to determine the manufacturer of a device)

can be shared with other tools (such as Wireshark), so long as they use
a compatible format. By default, Kismet searches:
/etc/manuf
/usr/share/wireshark/wireshark/manuf
/usr/share/wireshark/manuf
Additional search paths can be added with the 'ouifile=' configuration
option.
14. Kismet UI
The default Kismet UI uses the text-based ncurses library. Additional

UIs may be available from the Links page on the Kismet website
(http://www.kismetwireless.net/links.shtml)
The Kismet UI functions much as any other curses application (such as

Midnight Commander or Links) does. The menu is activated with 'escape',
'`' or '~'. Navigation between elements of the UI is done with 'tab'.
Use of a mouse is supported in much of the Kismet UI, although not all
widgets fully support mouse operation. Basic use of the UI with no
keyboard should be reasonable, however.
The main Kismet window consists of the network list, GPS information,
a summary of the current server statistics and packet source status, and
the status panel where errors and announcements are printed. Additional
components of the main window may be turned on with the 'View' menu.
- Preferences
Configuration of the Kismet UI is done entirely inside the UI via the

'Kismet->Preferences->...' menus. Preference changes are (for the most
part) immediate and do not require restarting.
By default, the Kismet UI will prompt on startup to launch the Kismet

server, this behavior (as well as auto-connection and server setup) can
be changed via the Startup and Shutdown preferences
(Kismet->Preferences->Startup and Shutdown):
Open Kismet server launch window automatically

- Kismet will open the server startup window when the UI is
loaded, if the default server is not running.
Ask about launching server on startup
- Ask to start a server (instead of just opening the server
window)
Show Kismet server console by default
- Automatically open the Kismet server console window after
starting the server
Shut down Kismet server on exit automatically
- Kill locally started servers and issue a shutdown command to
remote servers when the UI exits
Prompt before shutting down Kismet server
- Don't kill servers without confirming
Kismet menus support shortcuts, for example '~Wl' is the same as

navigating to the 'Windows->Client List' menu option.
- Sound and Speech
The Kismet UI handles sound and speech playing for most users. Sound
playing is straightforward (WAV files are installed, by default, to
/usr/local/share/kismet/wav) and can be played with any sound player
compatible with your install.
Speech is supported on Festival and Flite. Any other text-to-speech

program should work as long as it accepts plain text on standard in.
Speech text is encoded depending on the type of speech event, where %1, %2,
etc are replaced with data by Kismet. The supported events and
replacements are:
New network:
1. Network SSID encoded to speech encoding setting (spell, nato,
plain)
2. Network channel
3. Network BSSID
Alert:
1. Alert type
GPS Lost, GPS Lock:
No replacement options
- Tagging networks
Kismet can add custom data to a network in the form of tags. In the
Kismet UI, networks and clients can both have tags added to them. These
tags are displayed in the UI under network details, and logged to XML
and TXT output.
Tags can be set as permanent; By checking the "Remember note when

restarting Kismet" checkbox in the Network and Client Note windows, the
note is saved and will be re-applied to networks every time Kismet
loads.
Client tags are applied to a specific client in a specific network;

Currently there is no mechanism for adding a note to every instance of
the client.
- Sorting
Kismet defaults to "autofit" mode, where it tries to put as many of the

currently active networks on the screen as possible. Because autofit
mode is so variable, it doesn't make sense to try to allow selecting
networks in autofit.
To select a network and view details, first sort by another method (such
as channel, time, etc) via the Sort menu, then select a network.
15. Kismet Drones
Kismet Drones are designed to turn Kismet into a distributed IDS system.
Drones support all of the capture methods Kismet normally supports,
including multiple capture devices per drone. Drones capture wireless
data and forward to a Kismet server over a secondary connection (ie,
wired Ethernet). Drones do not do any decoding of packets and have
minimal hardware requirements.
A Kismet server connects to the drones and will provide a single Kismet
UI display, packet dump, and alert generation point. Capture sources on
remote Kismet drones are forwarded to the Kismet server and appear as
independent capture devices which can be configured for channel hopping,
locking, etc.
Using the tun/tap export function, the central Kismet server can export
the packets from all attached drones to a virtual network interface for
use with external IDS/packet capture systems (such as Snort).
To start using Drones, launch the kismet_drone process on a remote

system (editing the kismet_drone.conf file to control what hosts are
allowed to connect) or turn on drone capabilities in the Kismet server
(by enabling the drone config options in kismet_server.conf). When
running a kismet_server instance as a drone, local logging will act as
usual and Kismet clients can be connected to the server as normal; When
running kismet_drone, Kismet clients cannot connect directly to it, and
it will not log, a Kismet server instance must be started to provide
packet decoding, logging, and Kismet UI connectivity.
16. Talking to Kismet
The Kismet client/server protocol is basic text. Communicating with

Kismet can be as simple as using telnet or netcat, however writing a
full protocol dissector is suggested for serious applications.
This documents a simple case of the Kismet protocol and the basics of
communicating with a Kismet server, however for detailed information the
source should be consulted. A more complete documentation of the
protocol will be done at some point.
The Kismet protocol consists of commands and response sentences. A

command is of the form:
!ID COMMAND OPT1 OPT2 OPT3
Where ID is a number (which for proper error detection should be

unique) and the remainder of the arguments are the command and any
options it may take.
Options which contain spaces but should be treated as a single

argument should wrap those options in "\001...\001"
And a response sentence is of the form:
*HEADER: f1 f2 f3 f4
Where HEADER is the sentence type, and the remainder are fields
requested by the client, in the order they were requested.
Fields are expected to be plain ASCII text, however a client should

take precautions to be sure that the value is sane for the terminal
before printing it.
Fields which may contain a space (used as the separator character)

are buffered with \001...\001. As this could be any field, any
protocol parser should be able to handle fields so buffered.
Basic Kismet commands include:
!{#} SHUTDOWN
Shutdown Kismet instance
!{#} CAPABILITY {Sentence}

Query the accept fields for a protocol. Returns the *CAPABILITY
sentence
!{#} ENABLE {Sentence} {Fields}|{*}

Enable a sentence, with either the provided fields and order, or
all fields in the default order if * is specified.
!{#} REMOVE {Sentence}

Remove a sentence. Stop sending a sentence.
!{#} ADDNETTAG {BSSID} {Permanent} {Tag name} {Tag content}

Add an arbitrary tag to a network. If permanent, it will be
cached in ~/.kismet/tags.conf
!{#} DELNETTAG {BSSID} {Tag name}

Remove a tag
!{#} ADDCLITAG {BSSID} {MAC} {Permanent} {Tag} {Content}

Add tag to specified client in network
!{#} DELCLITAG {BSSID} {MAC} {Tag}

Remove a tag
!{#} ADDSOURCE {source line}

Add a source dynamically. Source line should be of the same
format as a 'ncsource=' config line
Protocol sentences:
When a sentence is enabled, any existing sentence data is sent (at

the discretion of the protocol handlers). Additional data is sent
in the form of deltas; To conserve bandwidth and processing time,
only instances where the data has changed are sent. For example,
when the *BSSID sentence is sent, a block of *BSSID records are
sent, for all networks previously detected by Kismet. Until the
sentence is disabled, a record is sent once per second for each
network which has changed in some fashion (new packets).
Mandatory sentences:
Kismet expects a client to support AT LEAST the following mandatory

protocols, which are enabled by default. At the very least, any
client should ignore these if it does not process them. They may be
disabled with the REMOVE command. In general, any client should
ignore protocols it does not understand.
*KISMET
Basic Kismet startup info
*PROTOCOLS
List of supported sentences
*ACK
Command response
*ERROR
Command failure
*TIME
Server timestamp
Example:
echo -e '\n!0 enable channel channel,networks' | nc localhost 2501
Enable the *CHANNEL sentence with the fields 'channel' and

'networks'. The output could look something like:
*ACK: 0 OK
*CHANNEL: 1 4
*CHANNEL: 3 1
*CHANNEL: 4 1
*TIME: 1245176426
17. Troubleshooting
Congratulations! You're actually reading the troubleshooting section of

the README! Many don't.
If you are having trouble getting Kismet to capture packets at all,

launch kismet_server independently of the client and watch the output,
it may be easier to spot problems then.
Some common problems with Kismet have easy solutions:
PROBLEM: Fatal errors about old configuration files/missing config

values
Kismet has evolved over time, and has recently had a
significant rewrite of the entire application, rendering many
of the old configuration values obsolete, and changing many
others.
FIX: Update your config files. If you are moving to the latest
release of Kismet, it may be best to just remove your old
config files, copy the new ones, and reconfigure.
PROBLEM: Kismet crashes immediately while starting up

FIX: If you are building Kismet from SVN routinely, it's possible
that the build system has gotten screwed up with a recent
change. Run 'make distclean' then './configure' and 'make'
again. If the kismet_capture binary is out-of-sync with the
kismet_server or kismet_drone binaries, things will behave
oddly.
PROBLEM: Kismet shows FATAL errors about permission denied

FIX: Are you trying to capture from a network interface without
root privileges? Kismet must either be installed as suid-root
(and the user starting it must be in the kismet group) or it
must be started as root, see the "Suid Root & Security"
section of the README.
PROBLEM: Kismet can not autodetect my card type or doesn't understand
the "type=..." source option.
FIX: Some drivers do not register with the /sys filesystem and can
not be properly autodetected. Check the list of capture
sources known to be problematic in this README.
Secondly, check the output of './configure' when building
Kismet and make sure that support for your capture type is
present, most commonly support for pcap or wext is missing.
PROBLEM: Kismet warns about interfering processes while starting up.

Many network services can interfere with Kismet (DHCP,
networkmanager, etc) by reconfiguring or shutting down the
network interface while Kismet is running.
FIX: Only necessary if Kismet is not behaving as expected, or
encountering errors. Shutdown or kill the offending
processes. This can often be most quickly accomplished by
stopping the networking services for your interface ('ifdown
wlan0' for example). In some specific configurations, these
alerts may be spurious (dhcp and wpa_supplicant alerts on a
multi-vap mac80211 interface doing sta+rfmon with a
wpa_supplicant scanning option, for example).
PROBLEM: Kismet complains about multiple VAPs under madwifi-ng

FIX: Destroy the other VAPs, or ignore this warning if there are no
run-time failures. Madwifi-ng has historically had
significant problems with multi-vap and rfmon (for example, a
STA VAP and a RFMON VAP).
PROBLEM: Shortly after starting on madwifi-ng, Kismet stops reporting

packets.
FIX: There appears to be a race condition in madwifi-ng startup
where an autocreated VAP causes errors in future VAPs. A
temporary fix is to reload the madwifi-ng driver before
starting Kismet, with the 'autocreate=none' modparm ('rmmod
ath_pci; modprobe ath_pci autocreate=none'), a more permanent
fix is to put this in the default module parameters for
ath_pci and make the necessary changes to your startup scripts
to create a managed VAP on startup.
PROBLEM: './configure' is unable to find libpcap, wext, ncurses, pcre,

or some other library when building from source.
FIX: Many distributions separate the runtime data from the data
necessary to compile programs against a library. Install the
'-dev' or '-devel' or 'devel-' packages for each of the
libraries ('apt-get install libpcap-dev' for example)
PROBLEM: Kismet exits immediately on Cygwin with no output.

FIX: Cygwin appears to have problems linking static libraries when
they are not in a sub-directory of the build. By default,
'./configure' will look in "Airpcap_Devpack" and
"Winpcap_Devpack", you should probably just expand the devpack
zips there.
PROBLEM: I can't capture on (some device that isn't an AirPCAP that I

bought from CACE) on Windows!
FIX: Buy an AirPCAP and read the docs.
PROBLEM: I can't see some parts of the Kismet UI

FIX: Some terminals have bad default color assignments and render
dark grey as black. Go into the Kismet color preferences and
change the items.
PROBLEM: A plugin crashes Kismet (server or UI)

FIX: Recompile the plugin and make sure it's build with the same
code as the Kismet server/client. This is especially
problematic if you are following Kismet development in SVN.
PROBLEM: Kismet makes the mouse slow or crashes the whole system
FIX: This isn't actually Kismet. Only the kernel layer should be
able to cause the system to lockup or crash, or interfere with
interrupts so badly that the mouse becomes unresponsive.
Kismet may exacerbate this behavior by changing the card
configuration and exposing flaws in the driver; This most
often can happen while changing channels, try disabling
channel hopping (or slowing it down), and upgrade to the
latest drivers for your device.
PROBLEM: Kismet cannot open a source, with the error:

"can't get usb bus index"
FIX: Some versions of LibPcap interpret any interface with "USB"
in the name as a USB device on Linux, and attempt to do USB
bus capture instead of packet capture.
Rename the interface (with ifrename or udev rules) to
something that doesn't include 'usb'. A newer version of
libpcap may also resolve this problem.
PROBLEM: configure cannot find libnl on Ubuntu, but libnl-dev is

installed
FIX: Some distributions (apparently, Ubuntu) require
libnfnetlink-dev to be installed as well. Currently there is
no good way to autodetect this.
18. Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Where did the name Kismet come from?

A: 'Kismet' means 'Fate' or 'Destiny'; While I wish I could take credit
for some plan about picking it for Kismets ability to uncover any
network in the area, I really just needed a name and clicked through
a thesaurus until I found a word that wasn't used in any other OSS
projects.
Q: Is there anything illegal about Kismet?

A: In and of itself, there should be nothing illegal about Kismet (it's
fundamentally no different than any other capture tool) but you
should check your local laws first. Note, however:
- Recording data from networks that you do not have permission to
may be considered an illegal wiretap.
- Using networks you do not have permission to use may be considered
'Theft of Service' and is illegal.
- Don't be stupid.
- If you are stupid, I'm not responsible.
Q: Can Kismet crack WEP?

A: Yes, but also, no. The base Kismet code does not do any WEP
cracking, however due to constant requests, there IS an Aircrack-PTW
plugin which will do PASSIVE WEP cracking only. It will NOT do
arp-replay, fragmentation, or other active attacks, however if enough
packets are gathered it will attempt to crack the WEP key and insert
it into Kismet to decrypt that network.
The PTW-WEP cracking plugin is in the Kismet source tree in the
plugin-ptw/ directory.
Q: What's the deal with Newcore, and where did it go?

A: Newcore was a total rewrite of Kismet, which lasted years longer in a
development state than planned. If you're reading this, you've got
the release that Newcore became already.
Q: What happened to the version numbers?

A: They stopped making sense. 3.0 to 3.1 was a 30,000 line change, but
calling it 4.0 didn't make any sense either. I hate project
perpetually in 0.1, 0.9 status, but I also hate artificially
expanding the version numbers. So, now, it's versioned by the
release date, YYYY-MM-RR.
Q: Can I use the old Kismet UI still?

A: No, sorry, too much has changed in the protocols, and the new UI is
much more flexible anyhow
Q: Can I use the old drones still?

A: No, again, too much has changed (however from now on it should be
possible to mix versions since the drone protocol has been expanded
to be expandable)
Q: What is RFMON/Monitor mode?

A: In the wired world, promiscuous mode turns off the filtering
mechanism in the device and reports all packets on the Ethernet (or
whatever) layer.
With wireless drivers, this doesn't necessarily mean anything
(sometimes it causes different results, sometimes it doesn't).
Wireless drivers present a fake Ethernet device to the operating
systems, which reports only 802.11 data frames. When looking at WPA
encrypted networks, this is even more limited, because packets are
encrypted for each client and only multicast/broadcast packets or
packets destined to the capture device could be reported as valid
data frames anyhow.
Monitor/RFMON mode is a special mode for wireless devices which
reports all packets the card sees, with the 802.11 headers intact,
including 802.11 management and control frames.
Q: Does Kismet work differently than NetStumbler?

A: Absolutely. Netstumbler (and Ministumbler, InSSIDer, etc) work by
instructing the card to probe for networks and report the networks
the card sees responses from. This method is obviously competent at
detecting networks in the area, however it can't record data, find
hidden networks, detect clients using networks, etc.
Q: Why are some probe SSIDs full of strange nonsense characters?

A: It appears with Windows Zero Config in many versions of Windows XP
has an off-by-one error which leaks a little bit of memory into a
probe request.
Q: Why is the range of a network sometimes totally bogus when using a

GPS with Kismet?
A: Doing real-time GPS averaging leads to increasingly bad data due to
floating-point accuracy and averaging. For more exact GPS data,
process the gpsxml file.
Q: What happened to gpsmap?

A: gpsmap was the old mapper code for Kismet. It stopped being useful a
long time ago when the map sources it used went away. It's being
replaced with a tile-based mapper, the beginnings of which are in
the kismap/ directory in the source code. Kismap isn't quite
finished for the RC1 release, but development continues on it and it
will be available hopefully soon.
Q: How can I merge multiple capture files?

A: Use the 'mergecap' tool that comes with Wireshark.
Q: How can I support device X with Kismet on operating system Y?

A: Kismet is designed to be fairly modular (especially the newest
versions based on Newcore). So long as your environment is something
like Posix and your device supports raw capture modes, it should be
possible. Swing by IRC (#kismet on freenode) and chat.
Q: Why does Kismet make a new interface named foo-mon?

A: When mac80211 is available, Kismet will use to create a new virtual
interface, named after the existing interface (wlan0 for instance
will cause a wlan0mon to be created). Kismet will use this virtual
interface for capture, so that it causes less disruption to the
configuration of the existing interface.
Q: What happens when I ask a question already here?

A: I'll probably be rude to you (or someone else will). But that would
never happen, because everyone reads the docs all the way to the end,
right? Right!?
top
Kismet-Old Readme
Kismet-Old 2009-05-R1
Mike Kershaw
http://www.kismetwireless.net
Licensed under the GPL
** NOTE **
This version of Kismet is based on the previous code base (previously known
as Kismet-Stable) and is now deprecated. It is made available for those not
willing or able to make the switch to the new release, however it is not the
recommended version.
1. What is Kismet
2. Quick Start
3. Feature Overview
4. Typical Uses
5. Upgrading From Previous Versions
7. Required Libraries & Utilities
8. Compiling
9. Configuration
10. Panels Interface
11. Operating Systems
12. Capture Sources
13. Graphical Network Mapping
14. Drone Remotes
15. Intrusion Detection
16. Reporting Bugs
17. Troubleshooting
1. 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 can sniff 802.11b, 802.11a,
802.11n, and 802.11g traffic (devices and drivers permitting).
Kismet identifies networks by passively collecting packets and detecting

standard named networks, detecting (and given time, decloaking) hidden
networks, and inferring the presence of non-beaconing networks via data
traffic.
2a. Quick Start
MINIMUM needed to get Kismet working:

* Run ``./configure''. Pay attention to the output! If Kismet cannot
find all the headers and libraries it needs, it won't be able to do
many things.
* Compile Kismet with ``make''
* Install Kismet with either ``make install'' or ``make suidinstall''.
YOU MUST READ THE SECTION OF THIS README NAMED "SUID INSTALLATION &
SECURITY" OR YOUR SYSTEM MAY BE MADE VULNERABLE!!
* Edit the config file (standardly in "/usr/local/etc/kismet.conf")
* Set the user Kismet will drop privileges to by changing the "suiduser"
configuration option.
* Set the capture source by changing the "source" configuration option.
FOR A LIST OF VALID CAPTURE SOURCES, SEE THE SECTION OF THIS README
CALLED "CAPTURE SOURCES". The capture source you should use depends
on the operating system and driver that your wireless card uses.
USE THE PROPER CAPTURE SOURCE. No permanent harm will come from using
the wrong one, but you won't get the optimal behavior.
* Add an absolute path to the "logtemplate" configuration option if you
want Kismet to always log to the same directory instead of the directory
you start it in.
* Run ``kismet''. You may need to start Kismet as root.

2b. Windows Quick Start
MINIMUM method to get Kismet running:
* Download the Win32/Cygwin Installer created by CACE

* Run the installer
* Start Kismet
* Pick your AirPcap or Kismet Drone sources
KISMET WILL ONLY WORK WITH THE CACE AIRPCAP DEVICE OR REMOTE KISMET DRONES
IN WINDOWS. NO OTHER CARDS ARE SUPPORTED, PERIOD. DO NOT ASK IF KISMET
WILL WORK WITH THEM ON WINDOWS, IT WILL NOT. THIS LIMITATION IS CAUSED
BY THE LACK OF SNIFFER-MODE CAPABLE DRIVERS ON WINDOWS.
2c. OSX / Darwin Quick Start
MINIMUM method to get Kismet running:

* Run ``./configure''. Pay attention to the output! If Kismet cannot
find all the headers and libraries it needs, it won't be able to do
many things.
* Compile Kismet with ``gmake'' (NOT 'make'. gnumake is required.)
* Install Kismet with either ``gmake install'' or ``gmake suidinstall''.
YOU MUST READ THE SECTION OF THIS README NAMED "SUID INSTALLATION &
SECURITY" OR YOUR SYSTEM MAY BE MADE VULNERABLE!!
* Edit the config file (standardly in "/usr/local/etc/kismet.conf")
* Set the user Kismet will drop privileges to by changing the "suiduser"
configuration option.
* Set the capture source by changing the "source" configuration option.
For OSX/Darwin, this should almost always be a source of type 'darwin'.
FOR A LIST OF VALID CAPTURE SOURCES, SEE THE SECTION OF THIS README
CALLED "CAPTURE SOURCES". The capture source you should use depends
USE THE PROPER CAPTURE SOURCE. No permanent harm will come from using
the wrong one, but you won't get the optimal behavior.
* Add an absolute path to the "logtemplate" configuration option if you
want Kismet to always log to the same directory instead of the directory
you start it in.
* Run ``kismet''. You may need to start Kismet as root.

3. Feature Overview
Kismet has many features useful in different situations for monitoring

wireless networks:
- Ethereal/Tcpdump compatible data logging

- Airsnort compatible weak-iv packet logging
- Network IP range detection
- Built-in channel hopping and multicard split channel hopping
- Hidden network SSID decloaking
- Graphical mapping of networks
- Client/Server architecture allows multiple clients to view a single
Kismet server simultaneously
- Manufacturer and model identification of access points and clients
- Detection of known default access point configurations
- Runtime decoding of WEP packets for known networks
- Named pipe output for integration with other tools, such as a layer3 IDS
like Snort
- Multiplexing of multiple simultaneous capture sources on a single Kismet
instance
- Distributed remote drone sniffing
- XML output
4. Typical Uses
Common applications Kismet is useful for:
- Wardriving: Mobile detection of wireless networks, logging and mapping

of network location, WEP, etc.
- Site survey: Monitoring and graphing signal strength and location.
- Distributed IDS: Multiple Remote Drone sniffers distributed throughout
an installation monitored by a single server, possibly combined with a
layer3 IDS like Snort.
- Rogue AP Detection: Stationary or mobile sniffers to enforce site policy
against rogue access points.
5. Upgrading from Previous Versions
Upgrading to Kismet 2008-05-R1:

"probenojoin" has been disabled by default in the config file, as
it's not terribly useful and generates a lot of noise.
No other specific actions needed.

For Linux users, the config option 'vapdestroy' has been added. If you
are using an Atheros card with Madwifi-NG, this controls if non-rfmon
VAPs are destroyed automatically. Not including this new config option
will default to 'false'.
Wrt54 devices now have channel hopping enabled. Packagers should

probably turn this off by default.
IV duplication tracking is now off by default to save memory, and is

controlled by the 'trackivs' parameter.
DBUS integration to try to quiesce Network Manager while Kismet

is running, controlled by the 'networkmanagersleep' config parameter.

Make sure to either update your kismet.conf file from the one included
in the distribution, or to copy the new ALERT enable lines. If you
do not copy the ALERT setup from the new config, new IDS alerts will
not be enabled.
In order to configure the wireless card for rfmon and start the packet
capture, Kismet needs root access. As soon as root access is no longer
required, Kismet drops to a designated user so that potentially hostile
remote data isn't processed as root.
When priv dropping is enabled, Kismet forks and leaves a single process
as root. This process is used for channel control and for restoring
card settings on exit. The root process performs no interaction with
user input, and only communicates with the base kismet_server via IPC
pipes.
For Kismet to have root access, it can be installed two different ways:
- Normal installation via 'make install' requires Kismet be started as
root.
- Suid-root installation via 'make suidinstall'. DO NOT INSTALL KISMET
SUID-ROOT IF YOU HAVE OTHER USERS ON YOUR SYSTEM. Suid-root installation
will allow unprivileged users to set the wireless card to rfmon (breaking
any connections using wireless) and capture data.
REMEMBER: Installing Kismet suid-root is NOT SECURE ON MULTIUSER SYSTEMS.

Most users of Kismet are likely using single-user laptops or handhelds,
where suidroot is very convenient. If you have ANY OTHER USERS ON YOUR
SYSTEM, suidroot Kismet can be used to shut down the wireless and put
files where you don't want to allow them to be put. If you have other
users on your system, install kismet normally and 'su' to root before
starting it.
7. Required Libraries & Utilities
Kismet is primary self-contained, however for some features it requires

some external libraries or utilities. For distributions which provide split
library packages of somelib and somelib-devel, you will need both installed
for Kismet to compile.
- LibPcap (0.9+ preferred): http://tcpdump.org/

REQUIRED for the majority of packet capturing systems
LibPcap provides the common capture system Kismet uses to read from most
Posix-style interfaces. Without LibPcap, Kismet will be all but useless
on most platforms.
- GPSD (any version): http://gpsd.berlios.de/

REQUIRED for GPS support
GPSD is a daemon which listens on a serial port for GPS data, parses it,
and makes it available via a TCP socket. Kismet can use a GPSD on the
local system, or if there is a wired ethernet connection available it can
use a GPS via port 2947 on a remote host.
- Imagemagick (5.4.7+): http://www.imagemagick.org/
REQUIRED for gpsmap map generation
Imagemagick is a graphics generation library which can read and write in

almost any format. Kismet requires a recent version of Imagemagick due
to IM's frequently changing API. If you do not plan to use gpsmap, you
can skip this library.
- Expat (1.95+): http://expat.sourceforge.net/

Expat is an XML processing library. Kismet requires this for parsing

netxml and gpsxml output logs. If you do not plan to use gpsmap, you can
skip this library.
Some versions of Expat included in distributions or other system

utilities (ie, XFree86-cvs) contain errors that make it impossible to
compile expat.h. Make sure you have the latest stable Expat version, and
remove offending duplicate headers if necessary.
- GMP: http://www.swox.com/gmp/
GMP is an arbitrary-precision math library. Kismet needs this for high

precision math functions when calculating graphics in gpsmap. If you
do not plan to use gpsmap, you can skip this.
- DBUS: http://dbus.freedesktop.org/
OPTIONAL for networkmanager control
Networkmanager is a network connection management tool. It can

reconfigure devices while Kismet is running, and should be stopped.
If Kismet is compiled with DBUS support and the networkmanagersleep
variable in kismet.conf is true, Kismet will use DBUS to send
sleep/wake commands to Networkmanager
8. Compiling
Compiling should be fairly straightforward. It uses the normal configure

scripts found in most open-source projects, and should build with any
modern version of gcc.
1. Download any libraries and external utilities needed

2. Run './configure' with any special options you want (see
'./configure --help')
3. Run 'make' or 'gmake'
4. Run 'make install' or 'make suidinstall' - SEE THE SECURITY SECTION
OF THE README BEFORE INSTALLING KISMET SUIDROOT! IF YOU INSTALL
SUIDROOT ON A SYSTEM WITH UNTRUSTED USERS, BAD THINGS CAN HAPPEN.
Crosscompiling Kismet can sometimes have problems with the libpcap

autoconf scripts not being able to detect the kernel type and version
of the target system. Overriding the configuration script variables
and passing extra configuration options can fix this:
'ac_cv_linux_vers=foo ./configure --with-pcap=linux ...'
FreeBSD users should configure kismet to use the systemwide pcap, which
supports multiple DLT types, with --enable-syspcap
9. Configuration
Kismet is controlled by 2 primary configuration files:

kismet.conf controls the server backend, and kismet_ui.conf controls the
panels user interface. By default, these files are in /usr/local/etc/.
Remote drone servers use a third file, kismet_drone.conf.
Kismet configuration files are a simple 'directive=value' format.
Basic server configuration:
1. Set up the target suiduser. This is the user that Kismet will drop
to after it sets the cards in monitor mode and attaches to them. See
the section 'Suidroot & Security' for more information. If this is
not set correctly, Kismet won't start.
This is controlled by the 'suiduser' directive.
2. Set up the capture sources. Most users will only need one, but it is
possible to have any number of sources defined which will be combined
into a single packet log.
Sources are defined with the 'source' directive. Source lines are
defined with 'source=type,interface,name[,channel]'. See the section
'Capture Sources' for a list of source types. The name can be anything
that is useful for you to identify what source it is. The initial
channel is optional. If an initial channel is requested on the command
line it will take precedence.
3. Set up channel hopping. The default channel hopping values will

probably be fine for most, but the speed of channel hopping can be
set with the 'channelvelocity' directive and the lists of channels
to be hopped can be set with 'defaultchannels'.
Additional per-source fine-grained channel hopping control is available
via the 'sourcechannels' directives, which are explained in the
configuration file comments.
Channel dwelling (similar to hopping) can be set with the channeldwell
option. Setting a channel dwell time controls the number of seconds
between channel change, compared to the tenths of a second defined by
channelvelocity.
Most users will want to use channel hopping, but remember - just like
it's impossible to see all of a program while channel surfing on TV,
channel hopping means missing some of the data on the network.
4. Set up what clients are allowed to connect. By default this is

limited to 'localhost', which is fine for most users.
5. Set the log template. By default, Kismet writes logs to the directory
it is started in. By putting a full path into the 'logtemplate'
directive you can force it to write them to another location (such as
a directory guaranteed to be writeable by the target suiduser).
Client configuration:
1. Set the host and port. By default, Kismet is configured to connect

to the localhost and standard port.
2. Set columns to be displayed. The default set should be fine for most
but it can be changed/expanded. Columns can be scrolled in the client
with the arrow keys.
3. Set a sound player. For most, 'play' from Sox (the default) should
be fine. If you use a sound daemon such as esd or ksd you will need
to change the play command to call esdplay or similar.
4. Configure speech (or not). Kismet can write to Festival for speaking
information about networks.
5. Customize colors. Most components of the Kismet panels UI can be
colorized.
The annoying popup window that opens every time you start the client can
be disabled by setting 'showintro' to 'false' in your kismet_ui.conf.
More advanced server configuration:
* To allow Kismet clients from remote hosts to connect, comment out the
bind_addr field to default to INADDR_ANY (all network interfaces).
* IDS alert rates can be controlled via the 'alert' directive, which
specifies the alert type, rate per timeframe (ie, 5/min), and the burst
rate per timeframe (ie, 1/sec). These controls are similar to the
iptables limit controls.
* Networks with known WEP keys can be decrypted in realtime with the
'wepkey' directive, which specifies a BSSID (or bssid mask) and the
WEP key.
* Runtime filtering of packets is controlled by the 'filter_tracker',

'filter_dump', and 'filter_export' directives, which influence which
packets are processed at all, logged to dump files, and logged to
xml/csv/etc files, respectively.
See the sub-section "Filtering Syntax" in this section for more

information on filtering.
* Including subconfig files. By using 'include=...' other files can be

included into the Kismet config, with filtering, WEP keys, etc.
* MAC address masking. Nearly any directive which takes a MAC address
(such as filters, WEP keys, etc) can take a masked address. MAC masking
works the same as netmask in TCP/IP, for example
'00:11:22:00:00:00/FF:FF:FF:00:00:00'
would match all addresses beginning with 00:11:22. Masks do not have
to break on whole pairs ('FF:FF:FF:F0:00:00' is a valid mask).
* Log tuning. The types of packets that make it into the logfiles can be
controlled via the 'noiselog', 'beaconlog', 'phylog, 'mangledatalog',
and other options.
* Probe tracking. By default, Kismet tracks probe requests and responses,

and attempts to combine a probe request network with the network that
responds to it. Sometimes this isn't the desired behavior, by setting
'trackprobenets' to 'false', probe requests will always remain separate.
* Channel delays. Currently the easiest way to get Kismet to spend more
time on part of the channel hop list is to include that channel multiple
times. A hop list of "1,3,6,6,6,9,11" would spend 3 times as long on
channel 6 as on the other channels. Channels can be repeated
throughout the list, as well, for example "6,1,6,3,6,9,6,11" would have
a similar effect while providing more frequent monitoring of other
channels.
* Fuzzy encryption detection. Not all drivers properly set the WEP flag
on encrypted packets. As of 2005-06-R1, Kismet automatically attempts to
manually determine if a packet contains encrypted data if it is part of
a network which advertises encryption. This behavior can be turned off
via the "netfuzzycrypt" option, and it can be enabled for specific
capture types via the "fuzzycrypt" config option.
Filtering syntax:
Filters are "positive-pass": anything matched by the filter is passed and
all else is excluded.
Filtering can be done on address types (ANY, SOURCE, DEST, and BSSID).
To exclude a network with the BSSID AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF, the filter would be:
filter_tracker=BSSID(!AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF)
MAC addresses can be masked in the same fashion as IP netmasks. To

match all networks of a certian manufacturer, restrict to the OUI:
filter_tracker=BSSID(AA:BB:CC:00:00:00/FF:FF:FF:00:00:00)
Multiple MAC addresses can be used on the same filter line. To filter
out two known networks from being considered:
filter_tracker=BSSID(!00:11:22:33:44:55,!00:11:22:33:44:66)
Which is to say, all traffic not from 00..55 and not from 00..66 will
be considered.
10. Ncurses/Panels Interface
The ncurses/panels interface is the default frontend provided with Kismet.
The panels interface is fairly intuitive, and has integrated help.

'h' will open the main help window showing all the options available.
Primary functions:
* Auto-fit and sorted network lists
* Client lists for each network
* Detailed network information
* Packet rate graphs
* Channel allocation graphs
* Realtime packet type display
* Compass-display of network locations
* 'Locking' channel hopping to a specific network
Other clients for Kismet are available from the links page on the Kismet
website.
All information about a network is contained in the network details window,

and the following columns can be turned on in the main display:
bssid BSSID (MAC address) of the network
channel Last-advertised channel for network
clients Number of clients (unique MACs) seen on network
crypt Number of encrypted packets
data Number of data packets
decay Displays '!' or '.' or blank, based on network activity in the
last 'decay' seconds (controlled by the 'decay' variable in the
config file)
dupeiv Number of packets with duplicate IVs seen
flags Network status flags (Address size, decrypted, etc)
info Extra AP info included by some manufacturers
ip Detected/guessed IP of the network
llc Number of LLC packets
manuf Manufacturer, if matched
maxrate Maximum supported rate as advertised by AP
name Name of the network or group
noise Last seen noise level
packets Total number of packets
shortname Shortened name of the network or group for small displays
shortssid Shortened SSID for small displays
signal Last seen signal level
signalbar Graphical representation of signal strength
snrbar Graphical representation of signal-to-noise ratio
size Amount of data transfered on network
ssid SSID/ESSID of the network or group
type Network type (Probe, Adhoc, Infra, etc)
weak Number of packets which appear to have weak IVs
wep WEP status (does network indicate it uses WEP)
The clients window has a similar selection of columns which can be enabled:
crypt Number of encrypted data packets transfered by client
data Number of data packets transfered by client
decay Displays '!', '.', or ' ' based on network activity
ip Last seen IP used by client
mac MAC address of client
manuf Manufacturer of client (if known)
maxrate Maximum rate client seen transfering
noise Last seen noise level of client
signal Last seen signal level of client
size Amount of data transfered by client
type Type of client (Established, To-DS, From-DS, etc)
weak Number of packets which appear to have weak IVs
11. Operating Systems
Kismet will work (at some level) on any operating system which has POSIX
compatibility, however for it to do native packet capturing it needs
drivers which are capable of reporting packets in rfmon. Remote sources
such as WSP100 or Drones can be used on any platform you can get Kismet to
compile on.
- Linux (Intel, PPC, MIPS, X-Scale, Arm, etc)

Known supported cards: Atmel_USB, ACX100, ADMTek, Atheros, Cisco, Prism2,
Orinoco, WSP100, Drone, wtapfile, pcapfile, wrt54g, ipw2100, rt2400,
rt2500, rt73, rt8180, ipw2200, ipw2915, ipw3945, iwl3945, iwl4965,
iwl5000, iwlagn, iwl5100, iwl5300
Broadcom 43xx
Kismet will work with any distribution of Linux. Currently, Linux is the
recommended platform for running Kismet because it has the largest
selection of rfmon capable drivers.
- OpenBSD
Known supported cards: Prism2 (wi), Atheros (ath), Intel 2200/2225/2915
(iwi), Intel 2100 (ipw), Ralink (ral, ural and rum), Realtek RTL8180L
(rtw), ZyDAS ZD1211/ZD1211B (zyd), Prism GT Full-MAC (pgt), Cisco 35x
(an), WSP100, Drone, wtapfile, pcapfile.
OpenBSD 3.7 and newer includes a software 802.11 stack and the Radiotap
packet header format. Any cards that use the 802.11 stack and support
monitor mode should work with Kismet via the radiotap_bsd_x capture
sources.
OpenBSD 3.2 and newer report standard frames from the Prism2 drivers.
Thanks to the efforts of Pedro la Peu, Kismet works fully with prism2
cards under OpenBSD.
- FreeBSD
Known supported cards: Atheros, Prism2, WSP100, Drone, wtapfile, pcapfile
FreeBSD-current adds a common Radiotap packet header format. Thanks

to Sam Leffler, Kismet supports the radiotap headers and should work with
current FreeBSD systems.
FreeBSD users should configure with the --enable-syspcap option to get

multidlt support from the system-wide libpcap library instead of the
bundled one.
- NetBSD
Known supported cards: WSP100, Drone, wtapfile, pcapfile, radiotap
There have been no reports positive or negative about NetBSD drivers.

Please email if you have them working.
NetBSD has radiotap support, in theory the radiotap_bsd_... source

types should work.
- MacOSX
Known supported cards: Viha, Darwin, WSP100, Drone, wtapfile, pcapfile
MacOSX is supported for Airport Classic cards using the Viha

drivers at http://www.dopesquad.net/security/.
Modern cards (Broadcom and Atheros) are supported via the 'darwin' capture
source. Read the comments below in the Darwin section of the source list
for more information.
Thanks for Kevin Finisterre for help adding the modern OSX capture sources.
Other third-party drivers may support rfmon for other PCMCIA and USB
cards under OSX - let me know if your drivers support rfmon, and I'll
add support in Kismet.
- Win32 (Cygwin)
Known supported cards: WSP100, Drone, airpcap, wtapfile, pcapfile
Win32 local packet capture is possible ONLY with the CACE Airpcap device.
http://www.cacetech.com/products/airpcap.htm
Thanks to Loris Degioanni for doing the bulk of the work adding airpcap
support under cygwin.
When compiling with AirPcap on Cygwin, it is necessary to pass both

--enable-airpcap and --with-airpcap-devpack=Path, where Path is the
CACE devpack containing winpcap and airpcap. Cygwin appears to have
a bug which prevents proper linking if the devpack is not in the same
directory as Kismet is compiled in. If kismet_server.exe instantly exits
with no output, it is typically indicative of a linkage path problem.
NO OTHER WIRELESS CARDS CAN CURRENTLY BE USED TO CAPTURE DATA NATIVELY

IN WINDOWS. CACE has released a public API for their drivers to allow
third-party programs to interface with them. Standard Windows wireless
drivers are not rfmon capable.
Due to interactions with Cygwin, users of the kismet_client ncurses frontend

should disable sound in kismet_client.conf
Win32 is also usable with REMOTE captures such as the Kismet drone
running on a platform which supports native capture.
12. Capture Sources
A capture source in Kismet is anything which provides packets to the Kismet

engine. Capture sources define the underlying engine needed to capture
data from the interface, how to change channel, and how to enter rfmon
mode. It is necessary to tell Kismet what specific type of card you use
because different drivers often use different methods to report information
and enter monitor mode.
Source type Cards OS Driver

--------------- ------------------- ----------- -------------------------
acx100 TI ACX100 Linux ACX100
http://acx100.sourceforge.net/
ACX100 drivers handle the 22mbit cards branded by D-Link
and others.
admtek ADMTek Linux ADMTek

http://www.latinsud.com/adm8211/ (Patches)
http://aluminum.sourmilk.net/adm8211/ (GPL driver)
ADMTek drivers used in many consumer 802.11b cards. With
the patches above, quasi-rfmon is possible - these cards
appear to be almost entirely software controlled and
always in a rfmon-like state. This card WILL BROADCAST
while in rfmon, rendering the sniffer visible.
The fully GPL drivers are supported, in addition to the
hacks to the non-free drivers.
airpcap Airpcap USB cygwin CACE Tech

The CACE AirPcap USB device allows native capture on
Win32/Cygwin.
The explicit airpcap source expects the Win32/Cygwin
interface name. This should be used once the source
is identified via airpcap_ask or if multiple simultaneous
sources are required.
airpcap_ask Airpcap USB cygwin CACE Tech

The CACE AirPcap USB device allows native capture on
Win32/Cygwin.
The airpcap_ask source lists available airpcap devices
and allows the user to pick interactively.
The 'capture interface' field is irrelevant and can be
filled with any value (for example, 'dummy')
atmel_usb Atmel-USB Linux Berlios-Atmel

http://at76c503a.berlios.de/
These drivers work ONLY on USB cards (Sorry, no PCMCIA
support). Monitor mode support is limited and "faked"
by bypassing part of the firmware and parsing packets
directly, and is likely to not report all of the
frames.
This card MAY BROADCAST while in rfmon, rendering the
sniffer visible.
It appears that this card may be only formatting the
beacons as an 802.11 stream, which means you likely
will not see data frames, rendering most IDS functions,
IP discovery, and data logging unavailable.
ath5k Atheros Linux Kernel/Madwifi

http://madwifi.org
Based on the OpenBSD OpenHAL, the Ath5k drivers are the
future of Atheros support and will be mainlined into the
Linux kernel.
ath5k_a Atheros Linux Kernel/Madwifi

http://madwifi.org
Ath5k source for 11a only
ath5k_ag Atheros Linux Kernel/Madwifi

http://madwifi.org
Ath5k source for 11a/11g
bcm43xx Broadcom Linux BCM43XX

http://bcm43xx.berlios.de, kernel
Linux native broadcom drivers incorporated into modern
kernels.
b43 Broadcom Linux
B43 broadcom drivers for current Broadcom devices in
Linux kernels
b43legacy Broadcom Linux

B43 broadcom drivers for legacy Broadcom devices in
Linux kernels
cisco Aironet 340,350 Linux Kernel 2.4.10 - 2.4.19

Standard Cisco cards in Linux. Works only with
the Linux kernel drivers, not the drivers found in
pcmcia-cs.
The drivers found on the cisco.com site can be patched
with the files from the Kismet download site to add
monitor mode with channel control, HOWEVER these drivers
are extremely buggy for normal use and work only with
the 2.4 kernel tree.
The cisco drivers currently do not enter rfmon mode
correctly, so channel control is not available. The
firmware will hop to whatever channel it feels like
hopping to, when it feels like hopping.
cisco_wifix Aironet 340,350 Linux Kernel 2.4.20+, CVS

http://sourceforge.net/projects/airo-linux/
Capture interface: 'ethX:wifiX'
Kernel 2.4.20+ and CVS drivers use ethX for normal mode
and wifiX for monitor mode. Kismet needs to know both
devices, which may not necessarily be the same number,
for example 'eth1:wifi0'.
Linux kernel 2.4.20 and 2.4.21 have highly unstable cisco
drivers and should be avoided.
The cisco drivers currently do not enter rfmon mode
correctly, so channel control is not available. The
firmware will hop to whatever channel it feels like
hopping to, when it feels like hopping.
darwin OSX native cards OSX/Darwin OSX

Supports both Broadcom and Atheros Airport-Extreme cards.
When using a Broadcom based card, it may be necessary to
enable rfmon on the device for the first time using another
program.
When using an Atheros based card, 802.11a may also be supported
by adding a 'sourcechannels' line to kismet.conf.
hostap Prism/2 Linux HostAP 0.4

http://hostap.epitest.fi/
HostAP drivers drive the Prism/2 chipset in access point
mode, but also can drive the cards in client and monitor
modes. The HostAP drivers seem to change how they go
into monitor mode fairly often, but this source should
manage to get them going.
ipw2100 Intel/Centrino Linux ipw2100-0.44+

http://ipw2100.sourceforge.net/
The Linux IPW2100/Centrino drivers for 802.11b cards
now support rfmon, so here's support for them. They act
more or less like any other wireless interface would.
ipw2200 Intel/Centrino Linux ipw2200-1.0.4+

The Linux IPW2200/Centrino drivers for 802.11bg cards
support rfmon as of 1.0.4 and firmware 2.3.
Signal level reporting requires radiotap be turned on
in the makefile while compiling the driver. Noise levels
are not reported.
ipw2915 Intel/Centrino Linux ipw2200-1.0.4+

The Linux IPW2200/Centrino drivers for 802.11bga cards
support rfmon as of 1.0.4 and firmware 2.3.
This is the same as ipw2200 but defaults to scanning the
802.11a channel range in addition to 802.11b/g.
Signal level reporting requires radiotap be turned on
in the makefile while compiling the driver. Noise levels
are not reported.
ipw3945 Intel/Centrino Linux ipw3945

The Linux IPW3945/Centrino drivers for Intel Core
802.11bga cards.
ipwlivetap Intel/Centrino Linux ipw2200/3945

The ipw3945 and patched ipw2200 drivers support a
special mode which allows monitor-mode style sniffing
while remaining associated. Channel hopping is not
possible, as the card is still associated to a
specific AP, but single-channel IDS and sniffing can
be accomplished. See the ipw driver mailing list
archives for information about patching your drivers.
iwl3945 Intel/Centrino Linux iwl3945

Intel's new IPW drivers using the mac80211 kernel
layer.

layer.
iwlagn Intel/Centrino Linux iwl4965

layer.

layer.

layer.
kismet_drone n/a Any n/a

Capture interface: 'dronehost:port'
The remote drone capture source connects to a Kismet
drone and processes the packets. Refer to the Remote
Drone section of the README for more details about how
to set up a drone.
madwifi_a Atheros Linux madwifi

http://sourceforge.net/projects/madwifi/
Capture interface: 'athX'
Capture interface: 'wifiX' (Madwifi-NG)
Madwifi drivers in 802.11a-only mode.
When using madwifi-ng, be sure all non-monitor VAPs have
been removed, otherwise madwifi will not properly report
most traffic.
madwifi_b Atheros Linux madwifi
Madwifi drivers in 802.11b-only mode.
most traffic.
madwifi_g Atheros Linux madwifi

Madwifi drivers in 802.11g-only mode. This will,
obviously, also see 11b networks.
most traffic.
madwifi_ab Atheros Linux madwifi

Madwifi drivers in 802.11a and 802.11b combo mode. This
will seamlessly switch between bands during channel
hopping.
most traffic.
madwifi_ag Atheros Linux madwifi

Madwifi drivers in 802.11a and 802.11g combo mode. This
will seamlessly switch between bands during channel
hopping.
most traffic.
madwifing_a Atheros Linux madwifi-ng

madwifing_ab Atheros Linux madwifi-ng
madwifing_ag Atheros Linux madwifi-ng
madwifing_g Atheros Linux madwifi-ng
madwifing_b Atheros Linux madwifi-ng
Capture interface: 'wifiX'
*Deprecated*. Detection for madwifi-ng is built into
the standard madwifi sources. The _ng source names
have been kept to allow old configs to continue
functioning.
nokia770 Nokia Linux Nokiea

http://maemo.org/
Nokia770 capture interface. Includes support for
validating frame checksums to screen out junk
packets, since the drivers pass us all data.
nokia8x0 Nokia 800,810

http://maemo.org/
Nokia 8x0 capture interface, including support for
FCS validation.
The Nokia drivers appear to exhibit instability while
capturing where they stop reporting packets. This may
be minimized by setting the Network Scan interval to
"never" in the control panel->networking section.
orinoco Lucent, Orinoco Linux Patched orinoco_cs

http://airsnort.shmoo.com/orinocoinfo.html
The Orinoco drivers which have mainlined into the Linux
kernel do support monitor mode, however only specific firmware
versions are supported and often they do not work.
An up-ported version of the older Orinoco drivers which more
reliably supported rfmon may be available at:
http://www.projectiwear.org/~plasmahh/orinoco.html
Generally, Orinoco cards are not recommended for use with
Kismet due to these limitations.
orinoco_14 Lucent, Orinoco Linux Orinoco 0.14+

https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/orinoco/
This source is deprecated and should only be used with
pre-release versions of a driver since merged into the Linux
kernel.
pcapfile n/a Any n/a

Capture interface: '/path/to/file'
The pcapfile capture source feeds a stored 802.11-encap
dump file through the Kismet engine again. This can be
useful for debugging or rescanning old logs for
alert conditions. Pcapfile sources are only available
if Kismet was compiled with libpcap support.
prism2_openbsd Prism/2 OpenBSD Kernel

Full support for Prism2 under OpenBSD.
prism54g PrismGT Linux prism54

http://www.prism54.org
PrismGT 802.11g drivers supporting monitor mode.
radiotap_bsd_ab Radiotap BSD Kernel

Dual-band cards with radiotap headers.
radiotap_bsd_a Radiotap BSD Kernel

802.11a cards (or dual-band on 11a channels only) with
radiotap headers.
radiotap_bsd_b Radiotap BSD Kernel

802.11b/g cards (or dual-band on 11b channels only) with
radiotap headers.
rt2400 Ralink 2400 11b Linux rt2400-gpl

http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/
Ralink 2400 802.11b cards using the serialmonkey GPL'd
rt2x00 drivers. Must use 1.2.2 beta 2 or newer drivers.
rt2500 Ralink 2500 11g Linux rt2500-gpl

Ralink 2500 802.11g cards using the serialmonkey GPL'd
rt2x00 drivers. Must use 1.1.0 beta 2 or newer drivers.
rt2860 Ralink 2860 Linux

Ralink rt2860 out-of-kernel drivers
rt2860sta Ralink 2860 Linux

Ralink rt2860 out-of-kernel drivers
rt73 Ralink 73 11g Linux rt73-gpl-cvs
Ralink 73 802.11g USB cards using the serialmonkey GPL'd
rt79 drivers (tested only with CVS driver versions)
rt8180 Realtek 8180 11b Linux rtl8180-sa2400

http://rtl8180-sa2400.sourceforge.net/
Realtek 8180 based cards (there seem to be an awful lot of
them) using the GPL drivers.
viha Airport OSX viha

http://www.dopesquad.net/security/
Monitor mode support for Airport under OSX. Does not
support Airport Extreme.
vtar5k Atheros 802.11a Linux vtar5k

http://team.vantronix.net/ar5k/
vtar5k drivers handle some Atheros 802.11a cards. Chances
are you'll have better luck with madwifi drivers.
wlanng_legacy Prism/2 Linux wlan-ng 0.1.3 and earlier

http://www.linux-wlan.com/
Old wlan-ng drivers didn't support pcap capturing and
use a netlink socket to the kernel. These are still in
use on some embedded systems (like the Zaurus).
wlanng Prism/2 Linux wlan-ng 0.1.4 - 0.1.9

Wlan-ng prism2 drivers prior to the AVS headers.
wlanng_avs Prism/2 Linux wlan-ng 0.2.0+

Newer wlan-ng drivers support a new header type and
slightly different monitor commands to report wepped
packets.
wrt54g Linksys WRT54G Linux linksys

http://seattlewireless.net/index.cgi/LinksysWrt54g
Capture interface: 'wlX'
Support for the newer firmware versions on the
WRT54G/S/L devices (and any others using the broadcom
reference chipset).
Some systems generate a secondary device, prism0, while
in monitor mode and require special care while channel
hopping, it is no longer necessary to specify the prism0
device explicitly for Kismet.
wsp100 NetChem WSP100 Any n/a

http://networkchemistry.com/
Capture interface: 'host:port'
The WSP100 is an embedded device which reports 802.11
packets over UDP. The wsp100 capture source is
(generally) system agnostic, however over time it has
been less maintained than others. If you'd like to
send me patches for this, please let me know.
zd1211 ZyDAS USB Linux zd1211

http://zd1211.ath.cx
The ZD1211 drivers have had some regressions which lead to
data corruption while changing channel. Some versions
work, and typically the aircrack patches resolve the
corruption issues if your version doesn't properly handle
rfmon.
Chipsets known to NOT WORK:
Broadcom - No linux drivers, only useable with ndiswrapper or
linuxant wrappers around windows drivers.
*** UPDATE ***
See the bcm43xx source type entry. There are
experimental reverse-engineered drivers which have
monitor mode support now under Linux! If they don't
work, however, then too bad.
Airport Extreme - Really a Broadcom, with no rfmon in the OSX drivers.
*** UPDATE ***
See the bcm source for linux on ppc, it MAY work, it
may not. Currently theres no solution for OSX but
I'm looking for OSX hackers interested in redoing the
Kismet port and looking into adding more support.
Atmel - There is a hack for pseudo-monitor in USB. There is
currently no equivalent hack for PCMCIA.
HermesII - Proxim successor to the Orinoco/HermesI. No support
yet in the drivers, may be available in the future.
ndiswrapper - Anything using ndiswrapper is using WINDOWS drivers
AND CAN NOT BE USED WITH KISMET.
13. Graphical Network Mapping
Kismet provides a tool for drawing networks overlaid on downloaded maps

called 'gpsmap'. Gpsmap reads the netxml and gpsxml files, sanitizes the
data,
GPSMap can download maps from several online sources (MapBlast, Tiger,
Terraserver, Earthamaps, and more) as well as use user-provided graphics,
provided you know the scale and center coordinates.
Main features:
* Travel path/track
* Approximate network circular range
* Approximate network center
* Convex hull of all network sample points
* Interpolated (weathermap-style) graphing of power and range
* Labeling of network centers
* Scatterplot of all detected packets
* Legend showing total sample networks, visible networks, colors,
power ranges, network center, etc.
'gpsmap --help' lists all of the switches for enabling different map
overlays, map sources, and coloring options. The default map source
is a blank image.
GPSMap currently can use maps from:

NullMap (Blank white background)
MapBlast (Vector) (Broken)
MapPoint (Vector) (Broken, read warning)
Terraserver (Satellite Photo)
Tiger (Vector) (US Census data)
Earthamap (Vector) (Requires perl) (Broken)
Terraserver Topo (Vector-ish)
Due to changes in the map websites (or their removal by vendors or

corporate buyouts), many map sources no longer work. These mapsources
are marked as "Broken" or "Unavailable". They have been left in GPSMap
solely to enable easy plotting on previously saved map images. These
will FAIL if they are selected and a user map is not also provided.
All of these map sources rely on external data. By using them, you agree
to whatever terms and conditions the map provider requires. Visit the
map providers website for these conditions. It is highly probable that
re-use of maps from vendors, in noncommercial or commercial situations,
is against the terms of service.
Plotting against non-vendor maps is possible by determining the equivalent

scaling mechanism and setting the appropriate map type. Typically this
must be done via trial and error.
The extras/ directory contains an additional utility, 'gpsxml-sanitize',

for cleaning invalid sample points out of the gpsxml data files for use in
other programs. GPSMap cleans the data set automatically, reprocessing the
gpsxml files is only needed if they are to be used in third-party programs.
14. Drone Remotes
Remote Kismet drones are designed to turn Kismet into a stationary,

distibuted IDS system. Drones support all of the capture sources Kismet
supports, and can have multiple cards per drone. Drones capture wireless
data and report it over a secondary connection (typically wired ethernet),
and have very minimal hardware requirements.
Each drone in the network can be configured for independent channel

hopping, and even different 802.11 standards (such as one drone monitoring
802.11a and one monitoring 802.11b).
A kismet server can be connected to all the drones in the network and will
provide a single dump file and alert system. Using wep decrpytion and a
named pipe output ('fifo' config file option), wireless traffic from around
an installation can be sent to snort (or other layer3 IDS).
To start using drones, set up a kismet_drone on the system with a wireless

card, using the kismet_drone.conf file. Then configure Kismet to have a
kismet_drone capsource pointing to that host, start kismet_server, and
use whatever client you like to connect to Kismet.
If a GPS is enabled on the drone, packets recieved from the drone will use
that GPS for positioning information. If the GPS is not enabled, then the
GPS connected to the Kismet server will be used.
15. Alerts and Intrusion Detection
Kismet will provide alerts based on fingerprints (specific netstumbler

versions, other specific attacks) and trends (unusual probes, excessive
disassociation, etc). Kismet focuses on the 802.11 (layer 2) network
layer, and provides integration via named pipes with layer3+ IDS systems
such as Snort.
Alerts are primarily meant to be used in a stationary IDS situation. Some

are potentially useful in a mobile/wardriving setup, but others may
generate false or useless information.
Alert name: NETSTUMBLER

Alert type: Fingerprint
Alert on: Netstumbler probe requests
WVE: WVE-2005-0025
Alert message: "Netstumbler ($version) probe detected from ($macsource)"
Tool-specific: Yes (Netstumbler 3.22, 3.23, 3.30)
References: http://www.netstumbler.com
Details: In an attempt to disclose the SSID of a network,
Netstumbler sends out unique packets. This is not done
in all situations, but when it is detected the potential
for false positives is very low.
Alert name: DEAUTHFLOOD

Alert type: Trend
Alert on: Deauthenticate/Disassociate Flood
WVE: WVE-2005-0019
WVE-2005-0045
WVE-2005-0046
WVE-2005-0061
Alert message: "Deassociate/Deauthenticate flood on $targetbssid"
Tool-specific: No
References: http://802.11ninja.net
http://home.jwu.edu/jwright/papers/l2-wlan-ids.pdf
Details: By spoofing disassociate or deauthenticate packets,
arbitrary (or all) clients can be disconnected from a
network. This attack lasts only as long as the attacker
maintains the flood.
Alert name: LUCENTTEST

Alert on: Lucent link test
Alert message: "Lucent link test detected from $sourcemac"
Tool-specific: Yes (Lucent/Orinoco site survey software)
References: http://www.agere.com/wlan/customercare/ (requires login)
Details: Lucent/Orinoco/Proxim/Agere provide site survey
software. This rule will generate an alert when it is
in use.
Alert name: WELLENREITER

Alert on: Wellenreiter SSID brute force attempt
WVE: WVE-2006-0058
Alert message: "Wellenteiter probe detected from $sourcemac"
Tool-specific: Yes (Wellenreiter 1.5, 1.6)
References: http://home.jwu.edu/jwright/papers/l2-wlan-ids.pdf
http://home.jwu.edu/jwright/papers/wlan-mac-spoof.pdf
Details: Wellenreiter attempts to use a dictionary to brute-force
a hidden SSID. Between each probe attempt it resets the
card to probe for 'this_is_used_for_wellenreiter'.
Alert name: CHANCHANGE

Alert type: Trend
Alert on: Previously detected AP changing to a new channel
WVE: WVE-2005-0019
Alert message: "Beacon on $bssid ($ssid) for channel $newchannel,
previously detected on $oldchannel"
Tool-specific: No
Details: Man-in-the-middle attacks attempt to direct users to a
fake AP on another channel. If Kismet sees an AP
change to a new channel, this is often suspicious
behavior.
Alert name: BCASTDISCON

Alert on: Broadcast disconnect/deauthenticate
WVE: WVE-2005-0019
WVE-2005-0045
WVE-2005-0046
WVE-2005-0061
Alert message: "Broadcast [disassociation|deathentication] on $bssid"
Tool-specific: No
Details: Many attacks use a broadcast disassociate or
deauthenticate to disconnect all users on a network,
either to redirect them to a new fake network or do
cause a denial of service or disclose a cloaked SSID.
Broadcast disassociations are rarely, if ever,
legitimate.
Alert name: AIRJACKSSID
Alert on: SSID of 'airjack'
WVE: WVE-2005-0018
Alert message: "Beacon for SSID 'airjack' from $sourcemac"
Tool-specific: Yes (airjack)
References: http://802.11ninja.net/airjack/
Details: The AirJack tools set the initial SSID to 'airjack'.
This alert is no longer highly relevant as the AirJack
tool has long been discontinued.
Alert name: PROBENOJOIN

Alert type: Trend
Alert on: Clients probing for networks, being accepted by that
network, and continuing to probe for networks.
Alert message: "Suspicious client $sourcemac - probing networks but
never joining."
Tool-specific: No
Details: 'Active' or 'Firmware' network scanning tools work by
letting the card probe for any network and recording
those that respond. These tools include NetStumbler,
PocketStumbler, and many others.
Kismet raises this alert when a client is seen to be
probing for networks but never joins any of the networks
which respond.
False positives are possible in noisy/lossy situations,
disabling this alert may be desirable in some
installations.
Alert name: DISASSOCTRAFFIC

Alert type: Trend
Alert on: Traffic from a source within 10 seconds of a
disassociation
WVE: WVE-2005-0019
WVE-2005-0045
WVE-2005-0046
WVE-2005-0061
Alert message: "Suspicious traffic on $sourcemac: Data traffic within
10 seconds of a disassociate."
Tool-specific: No
References: "802.11 Denial-of-Service Attacks: Real Vulnerabilities
and Practical Solutions"
Details: As discussed in the above research paper by Bellardo, J.
and Savage, S., a host which legitimately disassociates
or deauthenticates from a network should not be
exchanging data immediately thereafter. Any client which
DOES exchange data within 10 seconds of disassociating
from the network should be considered a likely victim of
a disassociate attack.
Alert name: NOPROBERESP

Alert on: Probe response packet with 0-length SSID tagged
parameter
WVE: WVE-2006-0064
Alert message: "Probe response with 0-length SSID detected from
$sourcemac"
Tool-specific: No
Details: Many firmware versions from different manufacturers
have a fatal error when they receive a probe response
with a 0-length SSID tagged parameter.
Alert name: BSSTIMESTAMP

Alert type: Trend
Alert on: Invalid BSS timestamps indicative of an access point
being spoofed.
WVE: WVE-2005-0019
Alert message: "Out-of-sequence timestamp on $bssid got $timestamp
expected $timestamp - this could indicate AP spoofing"
Tool-specific: No
Details: The BSS timestamp sent with beacons and some probe frames
cannot be spoofed with standard firmware or drivers even
when forging raw frames. A BSS mismatch is likely an
indication of an attempt to spoof the SSID and BSSID of
an access point.
This alert contains flap-detection to minimise false
positives caused by random bogons and AP recycling.
Alert name: MSFBCOMSSID

Alert type: Signature
Alert on: MAC src address used as CPU instructions by MSF when
exploiting the Broadcom SSID overflow
WVE: WVE-2006-0071
Alert message: "MSF-style poisoned exploit packet for Broadcom drivers"
Tool-specific: Yes
Details: Some versions of the Windows Broadcom wireless drivers
do not properly handle over-long SSIDs, leading to
code execution.
Alert name: LONGSSID

Alert on: SSID advertised as greater than IEEE spec of 32 bytes
Alert message: "Illegal SSID length ($len > 32) from $srcmac"
Tool-specific: No
Details: The IEEE 802.11 spec allows a maximum of 32 bytes for
the SSID, however the IE tag structure allows for 256.
Oversized SSIDs are indicative of an attack attempting
to exploit SSID handling.
Alert name: MSFDLINKRATE

Alert on: Beacon frame with over-long 802.11 rates tag containing
exploit opcodes
WVE: WVE-2006-0072
Alert message: "MSF-style poisoned 802.11 rate field in beacon $srcmac
for D-Link driver attack"
Tool-specific: Yes
Details: Some versions of the Windows D-Link wireless drivers
do not properly handle over-long 802.11 accepted rate
fields, leading to code execution.
Alert name: MSFNETGEARBEACON

Alert on: Large beacon frame containing exploit opcodes
Alert message: "MSF-style poisoned 802.11 over-sized options beacon $srcmac
for Netgear driver attack"
Tool-specific: Yes
Details: Some versions of the Windows Netgear wireless drivers
do not properly handle over-sized beacon frames, leading
to remote code execution
Alert name: DISCONCODEINVALID | DEAUTHCODEINVALID

Alert on: Unknown / reserved / invalid reason codes in deauth and
disassoc packets
Alert message: "Unknown {disassociation | deauthentication } reason code
0x$rc from $sourcemac"
Tool-specific: No
Details: Various drivers and access points have been reported to
improperly handle unknown/invalid reason codes.
16. Reporting Bugs
Bugs happen, and I'm sure some are still in the code. To make a useful
bug report:
* Check the "Troubleshooting" section to make sure it's not a known

user error
* Check the development CHANGELOG to make sure it hasn't already been
fixed in -devel. http://svn.kismetwireless.net/code/trunk/CHANGELOG
If the bug appears to be tied to specific packets:
* Start Kismet
* Use TCPDump to get a capture of the packets outside of Kismet, until
Kismet crashes. (``tcpdump -i foo0 -w crashlog.dump'')
* Run the capture through Kismet: Does it still crash? (use the
pcapfile capture type) ``kismet_server -c pcapfile,/path/to/dump,foo''
* Send me the dump file and the info
If the bug happens otherwise:
* Recompile Kismet from source and don't use ``make install''. The install
scripts strip debugging info from the binaries that we need.
* Run Kismet inside gdb (``gdb ./kismet_server'' or ``gdb ./kismet_client'')
* When it crashes, get a backtrace: ``bt'' in gdb
* Send me the info
17. Troubleshooting
Some common problems with Kismet have easy solutions:
PROBLEM: Fatal errors about old configuration file values

Kismet has evolved over time. This has made changes to the config files
necessary, and obsoleted old options. Kismet will automatically detect
old config files and alert on them.
FIX: Upgrade your config files. 'make forceinstall' or 'forcesuidinstall'
will replace old files, or you can copy the config file from the conf/
directory manually and update it for your configuration.
PROBLEM: Fatal error about being unable to find the suiduser

Kismet drops the privileges of the main packet processor to a specified
user for security - handling hostile remote data as root is just a bad
idea. If a nonexistent user is specified, Kismet will bail.
FIX: Set a valid user as the suiduser config variable. If you're sure you
don't want privilege dropping, you can run configure with the
'--disable-setuid' option, but this is NOT reccomended for most users.
PROBLEM: Fatal error about specifying a uid-0 target for suiduser

Kismet needs to drop out of root for security purposes. If you tell it
that the user to switch to is 'root' (or another uid-0 user, if you
happened to make one), it can't do this.
FIX: See fix above for errors about finding the suiduser.
PROBLEM: Fatal error enabling monitor mode, 'monitor' ioctl not available
Some capture sources use a private ioctl, 'monitor', to enable rfmon.
If Kismet is unable to find this ioctl, it means that the wrong
interface was specified, the wrong capture type is being used, or
most commonly, the drivers you are using have not been patched or the
patched drivers are not being loaded.
Be sure to download any patches needed for the drivers you are using,
and make sure that no other copies of those drivers exist in your
/lib/modules/kern-version/ directory. You may need to restart pcmcia-cs
if your wireless card was already running when you installed the patched
drivers.
FIX: Provide the correct interface and ensure that the patched drivers are
loaded.
PROBLEM: Fatal error about a Cisco card not reporting the correct
link type in Linux
FIX: Use the correct Cisco card drivers. The ones from cisco.com and
the ones in pcmcia-cs don't support rfmon, but act as if they do.
PROBLEM: Fatal error about being unable to open a file for writing
The most common cause of this problem is that the suiduser you specified
for Kismet to drop to does not have rights to write to the directory
Kismet is trying to log to.
If you did not modify the 'logtemplate' configuration file variable,
Kismet defaults to the current directory for saving logs. You can set
an explicit path in the logtemplate variable to put your logs in the same
place every time.
FIX: Start Kismet from a directory that the suiduser can write to, or set
the logtemplate variable to always put the logs in a directory the
suiduser can write to.
PROBLEM: Fatal error about being unable to open the pidfile

FIX: By default Kismet writes the pid to /var/run/. If you didn't install
Kismet as suidroot, you need to start it as root so it can write to this
directory and bind interfaces. If you're only using capture sources that
don't require root, you can change this in kismet.conf to put pidfiles
in /tmp (or any other directory). This isn't reccomended if you use
Kismet as root on a system with untrusted users.
PROBLEM: Fatal error about interface no longer available, and DHCP

FIX: Many distributions turn on DHCP for wireless interfaces. When DHCP
is turned on and rfmon is used, one of two things happens:
1. rfmon is entered before DHCP gets an address. After approximately
a minute, DHCP times out, and turns off the interface.
2. DHCP gets an address, but when the address expires, it is unable to
renew it, and turns off the interface.
MAKE SURE YOU DISABLE DHCP before starting Kismet - either turn it off
entirely for that interface, or kill the client (usually dhclient,
dhcpcd, or pump) before starting Kismet.
Similar problems can occur if networkmanager is running and active

while Kismet is running, as it will try to reconfigure the interface
Kismet is using. If Kismet is compiled with DBUS support, it can
automatically put networkmanager to sleep if the 'networkmanagersleep'
variable is set to true in kismet.conf
Be sure to also disable wpa_supplicant on any interfaces being used

by Kismet, as it will try to reconfigure the device.
PROBLEM: Configure is unable to find libncurses or other libraries, but

they're installed.
FIX: If you are running a RPM-based distribution, you will need the
foo-devel.rpm packages for each library. These packages contain the
headers needed to compile against the libraries.
PROBLEM: The panels client fails with the error 'unable to open
terminal xyz'.
FIX: Set your TERM environment variable to something libcurses has support
for. 'vt100' is usually a good choice.
PROBLEM: My GPS hardware claims to have a signal lock, but Kismet shows a
fix of 0 and does not log any GPS inforation.
FIX: Some GPS units have invalid NMEA streams which gpsd doesn't understand
correctly. Set the "gpsmodelock" option to "true" in kismet.conf
PROBLEM: I can't lock Kismet onto a single channel in the panels client,
it says the server doesn't support channel hopping.
FIX: You need to start Kismet with channel hopping enabled to be able to
lock a source to a specific channel. Kismet will automatically disable
channel hopping if none of the enabled sources support setting the channel.
PROBLEM: Kismet says it couldn't take the card out of monitor mode on
exiting.
FIX: The source you're using won't come cleanly out of rfmon, or I didn't
implement it for some reason. You'll need to reconfigure (or restart)
the interfaces manually.
PROBLEM: Kismet says it took the card out of monitor mode, but it still
doesn't work.
FIX: Sometimes cards don't come out of monitor mode cleanly. If it doesn't
work, you'll need to manually restart your card, sorry. Restarting your
card depends on your drivers and distribution, Google is your friend.
PROBLEM: I get 'invalid mode: monitor' or similar errors trying to go

into rfmon with madwifi
FIX: First, make sure you have madwifi-cvs.
Second, make sure you're running a recent kernel. You need wireless
extensions >= 15. To be safe, upgrade to the latest stable kernel.
PROBLEM: Kismet can't compile, there are errors about not finding libpcap
FIX: Kismet no longer includes libpcap source, and expects your system to
have a relatively modern (0.9+ preferred) libpcap install. Install
libpcap, and if your distribution provides it, libpcap-devel.
PROBLEM: Kismet immediately exits on Cygwin with no output

FIX: Cygwin appears to have a problem in the linker. If Kismet is linked
to the CASE airpcap/winpcap libraries, they MUST be inside a sub-directory
of the Kismet source for compilation. Recompile Kismet with the airpcap
devpack inside the source directory.
PROBLEM: Kismet stops capturing packets with Madwifi

FIX: Madwifi seems to have a race condition of some sort which is
exposed while hopping channels. Decreasing the channel hop rate may
reduce the frequency of the failures, but will not entirely stop the
channel.
It has been reported that loading the madwifi modules with the module
parameter "autocreate=none" helps, by not automatically creating the
initial managed VAP, subsequent creation of the monitor vap doesn't
exhibit the lockup while channel hopping.
Madwifi-ng development has switched to the Ath5k driver, which may

perform better.
Q: Where did the name Kismet come from?

A: The word itself means Fate or Destiny. While I wish I could make up
some smart comment about picking it because Kismet will ultimately
uncover every active wireless network in the area, really I just needed
a name and was clicking through a thesaurus and liked the sound.
Q: Is there anything illegal about Kismet?

A: In and of itself, there should be nothing illegal about Kismet, and it's
no different than any other network capture tool.
Note, however:
- Recording data from networks for which you do not have permission may
be considered an illegal wiretap.
- Using networks you do not have permission to use may be considered
theft of service.
- Don't be stupid using Kismet.
- If you are stupid, I'm not responsible.
Q: What happened to the version numbers?

A: They stopped making sense. 3.0 to 3.1 was a 30,000 line diff, but
calling it 4.0 doesn't make sense either. So, it's getting versioned
by the release date, which should also help keep stable releases coming
in a timely manner.
Q: Why is rfmon different from promiscuous mode, and why can't you just use
promisc?
A: In the wired world, promiscuous mode turns off the filtering mechanism
in your network card, causing it to pass all packets to the operating
system. With most drivers, it means the same thing in the wireless
world, -BUT- it only applies to the network you are currently associated
with, and it only passes the packets as 802.3/Ethernet-II. This means
no 802.11 headers, no 802.11 management frames, and nothing from
networks other than the one you're associated with.
Rfmon is a special mode that reports all packets the wireless card sees,
including management packets and packets from any network the radio can
see.
Kismet can't just use promisc mode because it won't be able to gather
information about the networks, and would only be able to get data from
the network you've already joined.
Q: Does Kismet work differently than NetStumbler?

A: Absolutely. Netstumbler (and MiniStumbler, and others) work by querying
the firmware of the card for networks the card has seen. While this
method is obviously able to detect networks in the area, it is noisy
(people can see you're running NetStumbler), it can't decloak hidden
networks, and it can't record data.
Q: Will Kismet work with Linuxant or NDISwrapper drivers?

A: No. These wrappers use the Windows drivers, which don't support rfmon.
Until there are native drivers with rfmon support, Kismet won't work
with these cards.
Q: What can I do to get you to support card 'xyz'?

A: Kismet support of a card is largely dependant on available drivers with
rfmon support. I'll be happy to get in touch with driver authors about
support.
Q: My distro loads the orinoco drivers for my prism2 card, is this OK?
A: No, not really. The orinoco and prism chipsets are based off the same
reference design, but there are subtle differences, especially in the
firmware timings. Using the orinoco drivers may work for a while, but
you're likely going to have problems with lost frames, corrupt frames,
and system hangs. Plus, if you ever have problems and mention you're
using the orinoco drivers, I'll yell at you.
Q: Why am I not seeing all the traffic on a network?

A: You're most likely channel hopping. You can't see all the traffic on
a channel if you're hopping, just like you can't see all of a show on
TV if you're channel surfing. If you need to see all of the data from
a single network, you'll need to disable hopping or lock Kismet onto the
network you want to watch. Additionally, Kismet can only process packets
which are passed by the drivers. Some drivers, firmware versions, and
cards simply don't send all the data frames while in rfmon, and not much
can be done to solve that.
Q: What about 802.11n?
A: Some 802.11n cards with the Atheros chipset are supported, however
currently the link type still appears as 802.11g. In theory these
cards will work with the madwifi-ng capture sources.
A2: Intel ABGN cards using iwlwifi should work.
Q: Why do I get a lot of nonsense networks, or lots of networks that only

have one data packet?
A: Some drivers (currently the worst offenders are wrt54g, zd1211rw, and
some versions of prism54) toss up garbage packets sometimes. Usually
these are chunks of valid frames, several valid frames mangled together,
valid frames with extra noise before them, etc. Kismet does the best
it can to screen these out, but if the packet headers look like a
data frame it will usually get past - management frames can be
rigorously validated, but data frames could contain anything so they
slip past.
There isn't a really good solution to this, but you can turn on the
'autogroup_data' option in kismet_ui.conf to make them less intrusive.
Q: What are the signal and noise levels measured in?

A: Depends on the drivers. Firmware. Modes. In other words, who knows.
Most cards and drivers don't do very well measuring signal levels in
rfmon. Some, like Cisco, don't even give us a per-packet signal level.
To make matters worse, signal levels are often quite binary - rarely
will a signal dwindle to 10 or 20 as you travel away from the source.
Beyond a certain point the radio is unable to assemble a packet out of
the weak signal, and it will simply disappear.
Generally speaking, a signal level of 200 is better than a signal level
of 100, but individually the numbers don't have much relevance. They
can be useful for coloring the maps as "better" and "worse", but thats
about the most you should use them for.
Q: Can Kismet be used in a commercial product?

A: As long as you follow the requirements of the GPL, I can't stop you.
It would certainly be nice if you're using Kismet to make a profit to
take a look at my wishlist or make a donation though.
Q: What about plugins?

A: Yeah, I know, I'm working on them.
A2: Look at newcore. After years of work, it will be releasing soon.
Q: 'configure' says it can't find libncurses/libcurses

A: First, did you install ncurses-devel? Kismet needs the development
headers.
Second, run 'ldconfig'. Some distributions (Fedora) seem to have an
out-of-date library cache that means ld can't find the library.
Third, make sure you installed the libstdc++/g++ packages. Configure
will erroneously blame libncurses if the linkage with libstdc++ fails.
Q: Configure failed on something else

A: Look at config.log and see why it failed. Sometimes packages don't
properly define all their dependencies and linking fails.
Q: When channel hopping, the orinoco keeps going to channel -1 and not
working.
A: Apply the latest patches available on the Kismet download page, these
fix a number of issues with the orinoco drivers and seem to alleviate
this problem for most users.
Q: What are the SSIDs full of strange characters, like ^A^B^J^J^K^H?

A: WindowsXP leaks bits of memory into the probe requests. These are legit
packets, and thats whats really in them.
Q: Why is the range of a network sometimes hundreds of miles inside Kismet,

but normal in GPSMap?
A: GPSMap does some moderately advanced filtering on data points which
allows it to sift the data collected and clean out invalid samples.
These methods require all of the sample points to be available, however,
and won't work during a live capture. If the GPS reports a momentary
invalid, but not wholly invalid, sample then Kismet will get confused.
Q: How can I merge multiple capture files into one?

A: Use ``mergecap'' that comes with Ethereal to combine dump files.
Q: How can I include all the standard known manufacturers in the manuf
identification?
A: There is a script in the extras/ directory that will convert the
standard OUI list (such as that provided with Ethereal) into the format
Kismet uses. This will make Kismet take a LOT more ram and a moderate
increase in CPU to store and search the expanded list. If your hardware
can handle it, by all means, but not recommended for lowpower systems.
Q: What if configure can't find the linux wireless headers?

A: Make sure you installed the kernel-headers package for your distro.
Barring that, find the location of your kernel headers, and pass
configure the directory with:
./configure --with-linuxheaders=/path/to/headers
Q: Do I need wiretap support?

A: Not really. Wiretap is only for specific situations (reading compressed
packets, or reading packets captured by some different system like
aironet. Generally speaking, you can just use the pcapfile capture type
which is included with libpcap.
Q: What cards work in *BSD?

A: Any card with radiotap support should work in any of the BSD variants
(Net, Open, or Free). Check your kernel docs and consider upgrading
to the latest release to get more radiotap device support.. With the
exclusion of OpenBSD, non-radiotap devices are not supported.
If you want to add support for a non-radiotap card, contact me over
email or IRC and I can help explain it.
Q: Why can't I use prism2 or USB cards on Darkwin?

A: Because I don't have patches for them. Send me some.
Q: I want to port Kismet to (X) or I want to support card (Y)

A: Kismet is designed to be fairly modular. Contact me over IRC or email
and I can explain what parts need to be changed.
Q: Why won't Kismet work on Windows?

A: Because there are few legally unencumbered drivers for Windows. I am
unwilling to risk the legal repercussions of attempting to leverage
the commercial drivers from sniffer demos.
Thanks to the efforts of CACE Tech, the AirPcap device is available
for Windows with drivers designed to let OSS projects use the
device legally. Kismet will now work with this device on Windows,
however this is the ONLY local capture device which will work.
Q: What happens when I ask a question thats already answered here?

A: I'll probably be rude to you and tell you to go read the docs.
But of course everyone already read the docs all the way to the end,
right? Right?
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Download Documentation Forum Links

Kismet Readme Current Kismet Readme

Kismet is an 802.11 wireless network detector, sniffer, and intrusion

Kismet also sports a plugin architecture allowing for additional

Kismet identifies networks by passively collecting packets and detecting

2a. Upgrading from recent versions

2b. Upgrading from Kismet-old versions

To take advantage of the new features, replace your existing

While this release breaks almost everything from previous releases, it

* Download Kismet from http://www.kismetwireless.net/download.shtml

3b. Windows quick start

Using the CACE Package:

* Download the Win32/Cygwin installer created by CACE and linked from

* READ THE READ OF THIS README.

* Download the Cygwin setup tool (http://www.cygwin.org)

3c. OSX/Darwin quick start

* Download Kismet from http://www.kismetwireless.net/download.shtml

Configure will automatically detect OSX and default to the group

* Compile Kismet with "make".

The wireless interface must be enabled in the wireless control panel

* READ THE REST OF THIS README

4. Suidroot & Security

Installing Kismet as suid-root creates a limited-functionality binary

Distributions are strongly encouraged to use this method as it allows

Under no situation should the kismet_server binary itself be set

Capture on wlan0, 802.11b channels only even if it supports 5GHz

Create a VAP on wlan0 named wlan0mon and use wpa_supplicant to

Read from a pre-recorded pcap file:

Capture using the first Airpcap device on Windows

Capture using a remote capture drone

Channel lists control the channels and patterns hopped to by capture

When the channel list is automatically created from the channels

Channels can typically be specified as IEEE channels (11, 36, etc)

Additionally, individual channels in the list can be weighted so that

Up to 256 channels may be specified in a channel list. For greater

Ranges may consist of channels or of frequencies.

A similar range using frequencies (802.11 2.4GHz channels are ~20MHz

Multiple ranges can be specified in a single channel list, separated by

6. Caveats and quirks for specific drivers:

Mac80211 General (Linux):

At the time of this release, the mac80211 drivers in Linux are

Madwifi-ng sources can be specified as either the VAP (ath0, mon0,

Madwifi-ng continues to have problems with multi-vap and initial vap

The out-of-kernel driver does not conform to mac80211 controls.

An out-of-tree rt73 driver similar to rt2870sta. It may be necessary

Broadcom has released a binary version of their drivers called WL.

Nokia ITT (Linux)

The Nokia device does not autodetect properly, a driver type of

BSD (BSD Generic)

ONLY THE AIRPCAP DEVICE IS SUPPORTED UNDER WINDOWS. THIS IS A

7. Supported capture source types

Capture source types are only required in specific situations where

Linux Capture Sources:

adm8211 Kernel adm8211 driver

pcapfile Pcap-formatted previously recorded file

BSD Capture Sources:

Currently, the BSD packet capture sources do not support autodetection

Patches/Additional BSD support welcome.

radiotap_bsd Generic BSD capture source, default 802.11b/g channels

pcapfile Pcap-formatted previously recorded file

Windows Capture Sources:

airpcap Airpcap generic source. Will autodetect the channel

pcapfile Pcap-formatted previously recorded file