Installing Kismet

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After you have ensured that you have a wireless card that can be placed in monitor mode, installation of Kismet is a very straightforward process. This section details where to get the software, and how to load it on your Fedora Linux installation.

Obtaining the Kismet Software

The latest version of Kismet is available for download from the Kismet Web site at www.kismetwireless.net/download.shtml. The current stable version of Kismet at the time of this writing is 4.0.1. If you do not want to download the most recent version, or if you would prefer to download the development version, you can browse all available versions at http://kismetwireless.net/code/.

Note 

All of the examples and instructions in this Chapter use Kismet 4.0.1. If you are using a different version of Kismet, you need to change the version information in these examples as appropriate.

After you have downloaded kismet-feb0401.tar.gz, uncompress and untar the package as shown in Figure 5.21.

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Figure 5.21: Uncompressing and Untarring the Kismet Files

This creates the kismet-feb.04.01 directory. Using the cd command, change the directory to kismet-feb.04.01, as shown in Figure 5.22.

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Figure 5.22: Changing to the Kismet Directory

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Tools & Traps…
The Kismet Configuration Options

Not every laptop is configured the same way. The packages installed and the hardware configurations can vary in a virtually infinite number of combinations. Kismet takes these differences into account and offers you the ability to tailor Kismet to your specific environment using special switches with the configure script.

These are the configuration switches, also shown in Chapter 4, and what they accomplish when invoked:

  • --disable-curses This switch disables the “curses” user interface.

  • --disable-panel This switch disables the panel extensions with ncurses.

  • --disable-gps This switch disables GPS support with Kismet.

  • --disable-netlink This switch disables netlink socket capture support.

  • --disable-wireless This switch disables the wireless extensions in the Linux kernel.

  • --disable-pcap This switch disables packet capture support using libpcap (the packet capture library).

  • --enable-syspcap This switch enables the system libpcap. Dragorn, the author of Kismet, does not recommend the use of this switch.

  • --disable-setuid This switch disables the suid cabability of Kismet. Again, Dragorn does not recommend the use of this switch.

  • --enable-wsp100 enable WSP100 remote sensor capture device This switch enables the use of a WSP 100 remote sensor.

  • --enable-zaurus This switch enables extra features used by the Sharp Zaurus Personal Digital Assistant (PDA).

  • --enable-local-dumper This switch forces kismet to use a dump format other than Ethereal, even if Ethereal is installed on the system.

  • --with-ethereal=DIR This switch adds support for Ethereal wiretap logs. DIR should be replaced with the path to ethereal.

  • --without-ethereal This switch disables support for Ethereal wiretap logs.

  • --enable-acpi Enable linux-kernel ACPI support This switch enables Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) support for Kismet.

    ACPI must be enabled in the Linux kernel for this switch to work.

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There are some issues with installing Kismet under Fedora. Depending on the installation type you chose when you installed Fedora, you may or may not have all the requisite packages installed on your laptop. For instance, if you’ve installed just the workstation load, you will be missing some vital components for the installation of Kismet.

To remedy this situation, you’ll want to use the command-line package retrieval software, yum. Yum allows you to specify packages you need to install and if you have a current Internet connection, it will connect to a server, find all relevant dependencies, and install them all. See the examples in Figures 5.23 and 5.24 for samples of how to use the yum command.

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Figure 5.23: Using yum to Install the flex and ncurses Packages

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Figure 5.24: Using yum to Install the gcc-c++ Package

Once you have all the required packages installed for your Kismet needs, you are ready to begin configuring and installing Kismet.

Configuring the Kismet Software for Installation

Preparing to compile and install Kismet is a two-step process.

  1. Configuring the installation script

  2. Generating dependencies

First, you need to configure the installation script. From the kismet-feb.04.01 directory, run the configure script, as shown in Figure 5.25.

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Figure 5.25: Configuring the Installation Script

The proper way to run this is with the “./” in front of configure. This indicates that the script to run is the configure script in the current, or “./” directory. Alternately, the same results could be achieved by issuing the command with the full path to configure.

Note 

To use these switches, append them to configure when it is invoked. For example, to configure Kismet without the curses interface, issue the following command:

root@fedora  root/kismet-4.0.1/# ./configure –disable-curses

Next, you need to generate dependencies using the make dep command, as shown in Figure 5.26.

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Figure 5.26: Generating Dependencies

You are now ready to install Kismet.

Installing the Kismet Software

Before Kismet can be used, it needs to be compiled and installed. One command accomplishes both of these tasks: make install. Issue the make install command (as shown in Figure 5.27) to compile and install your Kismet installation.

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Figure 5.27: Installing Kismet

Unless you have an installation error, your output should be similar to that shown in Figure 5.28.

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Figure 5.28: Success!

Kismet is now installed on your computer. Before you can use Kismet though, you need to edit the Kismet Configuration file, kismet.conf. The configuration options are detailed in Chapter 6 of this book, “Configuring and Using Kismet.”



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WarDriving(c) Drive, Detect, Defend(c) A Guide to Wireless Security
Special Edition Using Macromedia Studio 8
ISBN: N/A
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 125

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