Summary

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Kismet is a very powerful tool for WarDrivers that prefer to use Linux. Unlike some other WarDriving programs, some configuration is required so that Kismet will work with your system. First, if you want to log the coordinates of the access points you discover with Kismet, you need to install the Global Positioning System Daemon (GPSD) software.

After you have installed GPSD, you need to configure the kismet.conf file to tailor Kismet to your specific system. In the kismet.conf, you must specify an suiduser. This is the user that kismet will run as. This should be a normal user, not the root account. You must also specify the type of card that you are using (ORiNOCO, Prism 2, Cisco, and so on) as well as the device (eth0, eth1, wlan0, or another). You can set a number of variables in the kismet.conf file that allows you to control the WarDrive. These include the number of times per second Kismet should change or “hop” channels and whether you want to disable channel hopping completely. The kismet.conf file also contains information about whether or not to use GPSD.

Starting Kismet is not a completely straightforward process because of the suiduser. Since Kismet runs as a non-root user, you need to ensure that you have that user’s environment variables and permissions, but still have the root privileges needed to start Kismet. The easiest way to do this is to use the su command rather than the su – command prior to starting Kismet.

To successfully WarDrive using Kismet, you need to understand the Kismet user interface. The Kismet user interface is divided into three main parts: the Networks Display, the Statistics Frame, and the Status Frame. The Networks Display lists all of the wireless networks that Kismet has discovered and the current GPS position information. The Statistics Frame displays information about the type of traffic Kismet has captured. The Status Frame scrolls information about the networks Kismet discovers as well as the battery status.

A typical WarDrive using Kismet is accomplished with three main steps:

1. Change to root using the su command from the suiduser account noted in kismet.conf.

2. Start GPSD listening on the port noted in kismet.conf. By default, GPSD listens on port 2947.

3. Start Kismet.

Once Kismet is started, verify that you are receiving GPS coordinates by looking for the GPS position information on the Networks Display of the Kismet user interface. If you are, you can begin WarDriving using Kismet.

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