Frequently Asked Questions

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The following Frequently Asked Questions, answered by the authors of this book, are designed to both measure your understanding of the concepts presented in this chapter and to assist you with real-life implementation of these concepts. To have your questions about this chapter answered by the author, browse to www.syngress.com/solutions and click on the “Ask the Author” form. You will also gain access to thousands of other FAQs at ITFAQnet.com.

1.	Can I change the user interface colors that Kismet uses by default?
2.	What colors can I use on the Kismet user interface?
3.	Kismet saves Weak Initialization Vectors (IVs). Does this mean that I can use Kismet to crack WEP?
4.	How does Kismet determine if an access point it has discovered is using a default SSID?
5.	How many different log files does Kismet generate, and what are their differences?
6.	Can I change the sound that Kismet plays when it finds a new access point?
7.	How do I get Kismet to display my battery status?

Answers

1.	Yes. The kismet_ui.conf file found in /usr/local/etc allows you to change the default colors and many other options that are specific to the kismet user interface. The following variables determine the colors used by Kismet: backgroundcolor The color of the background on the user interface. textcolor The text color used by the Kismet user interface for all text except access points found. bordercolor The color of the borders separating the three main frames of the user interface. titlescolor The color for titles on the user interface. monitorcolor The color used on the user interface for GPS and battery information. wepcolor The color Kismet uses to display access points with Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) enabled. factorycolor The color Kismet uses to show access points with default settings. opencolor The color Kismet uses to show access points that are not using WEP but do not have default settings. cloakcolor The color Kismet uses to show cloaked networks that have been discovered.
2.	You can use black, red, yellow, green, blue, magenta, cyan, and white. If you want the text to be bolded, prepend the word “hi-” to the color. For example, to use bolded red to denote your GPS and battery information, set the monitorcolor variable to “hi-red” in the kismet_ui.conf file.
3.	No. Kismet simply saves the Weak IVs so they can be fed into another program such as WEPCrack for cracking. Kismet it not designed to crack WEP keys.
4.	The ap_manuf file located in /usr/local/etc is a flat text file that has the different Media Access Control (MAC) addresses used by different manufacturers and their default SSIDs. If the MAC address and SSID are listed in this file, Kismet considers the SSID to be the default.
5.	Kismet generates the following log files: dump A raw packet dump. network A plaintext log of detected networks. csv A plaintext log of detected networks in Comma Separated Value (CSV) format. xml An Extensible Markup Language (XML) formatted log of networks. weak The weak packets detected and stored in AirSnort format. cisco A log of Cisco equipment discovered in Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP) format. gps A log of the Global Positioning System coordinates. By default, Kismet generates all seven of these logs. You can change this by editing the logtypes variable in the kismet.conf file.
6.	Yes. Kismet plays the .wav file indicated in the sound_alert variable field of the kismet_ui.conf. You can change this to any .wav file that you want as long as you provide the full path to the .wav file.
7.	The apm variable of the kismet_ui.conf file must be set to “true” in order for your battery status to be displayed in the Kismet user interface. You must also have Advanced Power Management (APM) enabled in your Linux kernel.

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