Summary

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In the eyes of many WarDrivers, Kismet is the application of choice because of its capability to detect both access points that are broadcasting their SSID as well as those in stealth mode. In order to achieve this functionality, Kismet needs to place the wireless card in monitor mode. Monitor mode has been both a blessing and a curse for WarDrivers. A blessing because it can detect cloaked access points, a curse because getting the card into monitor mode has been a difficult process for many WarDrivers.

Hermes-based cards like the ORiNOCO, can be used with Kismet, however you need to have a compatible pcmcia-cs module and a patched ORiNOCO driver. Prism 2–based cards are much easier to place in monitor mode through the use of the wlan-ng drivers and a compatible pcmcia-cs module.

Once you have a compatible version of pcmcia-cs and the appropriate drivers for your wireless card installed, the actual installation of Kismet is a very simple process. Like many Linux packages, a configure script is provided that attempts to create a Makefile with the proper configuration options for your system. After you run the configuration script, you need to run a dependency check to ensure that all of the proper dependencies are present and/or created. Finally, the make install command compiles Kismet for your system and places the binaries in the proper directories.

Once Kismet is compiled, the configuration files must be edited to reflect your specific system. Information on these configuration options is provided in Chapter 6.

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