Linux & Wireless LANs

Miscellaneous Applications

Wlassistant

Wlassistant is a GUI for WLAN configuration.

JWepGen

JWepGen is a simple interface to generate WEP keys that work with the standard WEP generators used by many wireless access point manufacturers.

The Linux Wireless Sensor LAN Project

The Linux Wireless Sensor LAN Project tries to make a Linux host act as a member of an 802.15.4 wireless sensor network as a fully functional device.

getwifi allows a user to specify which networks they would like to join, in order. It also provides dynamic configuration of selected SSIDs based upon user specification. Currently, the networks are joined only based on precedence.

wlan-config

wlan-config is designed to make connecting to wireless networks much easier. It allows easy management of network settings for different networks and can run preconnect and alwaysrun scripts when connecting, postconnect scripts for connection specific settings, and disconnect scripts when disconnecting.

wifiswitch

wifiswitch is a script to greatly aide in switching between multiple configured wireless environments for Wireless Tools-enabled wifi cards. wifiswitch will run iwconfig, ifconfig (or dhcpcd if configured), and route to configure the connection's settings, as well as configure /etc/resolv.conf if desired. Settings are unique for each environment (or access point). A string of post-configuration commands can also be executed after the necessary tools have been run (useful for shutting down an ethernet interface).

MAPI

MAPI is a general API for interfacing with any wireless device driver that support wireless extensions.

Mobidik.tk

Mobidik.tk is a tcl-tk wrapper around wireless tools.

TkWiFi

tkwifi is a Perl-Tk application for Linux to monitor and switch between your Wi-Fi and Ethernet connections. It also offers "Profiles", which are SSID/WEP-key pairs for connecting to secure or private networks.

WiFi Radar

WiFi Radar is a Python/PyGTK2 utility for managing WiFi profiles. It enables you to scan for available networks and create profiles for your preferred networks. At boot time, running WiFi Radar will automatically scan for an available preferred network and connect to it. You can drag and drop your preferred networks to arrange the profile priority.

Resources

A great survey of wireless networking by Ben Gross.

Hardware

Jean Tourrilhes provides a huge survey . Also the PCMCIA card survey includes Wireless cards.

USB Adapters

Atmel at76c503 Driver

at76c503 is a Linux driver for the wlan USB adapter based on the Atmel at76c503 chip. It currently supports ad-hoc mode only. It supports adapters from Atmel, the Belkin F5D6050, Netgear MA101B, and others. see also the Atmel driver page .

Linux Compatibility Survey: USB WLAN Sticks

D-Link DWL-122	Debian	German
SiteCom WL-343		German

miniPCI Cards

These cards are usually used in laptops, see the survey of WLAN and other miniPCI cards working with Linux.

HOWTOs

The Wireless Tools/HowTo provides a set of generic tools that can help you set up and monitor Wireless LAN devices through the Wireless Extension interface. This interface is available only under Linux 2.0.x and higher, and supports both pre-802.11 features and 802.11-compliant features. It is accompanied by the Linux Wireless LAN HowTo, which includes all the information you need to set up any Wireless LAN under Linux.

Wireless-Linux-HOWTO II . Wireless is a new technology in networking cards, with high speed rate (up to 11 Mbps). This document explains how to setup Wireless in Linux, compatibility problems, something about geographic requirements and more.

The Wireless-Linux-HOWTO II describes the exact steps, hardware, and software required to establish a functional wireless connection between a PC and Router on a Linux-based operating system.

The official Linux Wireless wiki is the main place to get all kind of information about Wireless Networking (currently only IEEE 802.11) on the Linux operating system. This wiki features information for end-users, developers and vendors. This site covers mostly the new mac80211-based drivers and the mac80211 stack itself along with the new userspace and in-kernel configuration interfaces nl80211 and cfg80211.

Other Resources

Related Books

Chris Hurley, Michael Puchol, Russ Rogers, Frank Thornton: WarDriving - Drive, Detect, Defend, A Guide to Wireless Security, 2004

War Driving From the Publisher: "Wardriving has brought some of the top people in the wireless industry together to put together a truly informative book on what wardriving is and the tools that should be part of any IT department's arsenal that either has wireless or is looking to deploy it." -John Kleinschmidt, Michiganwireless.org Founder

The practice of WarDriving is a unique combination of hobby, sociological research, and security assessment. The act of driving or walking through urban areas with a wireless-equipped laptop to map both protected and un-protected wireless networks has sparked intense debate amongst lawmakers, security professionals, and the telecommunications industry. This first ever book on WarDriving is written from the inside perspective of those who have created the tools that make WarDriving possible and those who gather, analyze, and maintain data on all secured and open wireless access points in very major, metropolitan area worldwide. These insiders also provide the information to secure your wireless network before it is exploited by criminal hackers.

Wireless networks have become a way of life in the past two years. As more wireless networks are deployed the need to secure them increases. This book educates users of wireless networks as well as those who run the networks about the insecurities associated with wireless networking. This effort is called WarDriving. In order to successfully WarDrive there are hardware and software tool required. This book covers those tools, along with cost estimates and recommendations. Since there are hundreds of possible configurations that can be used for WarDriving, some of the most popular are presented to help readers decide what to buy for their own WarDriving setup.

Many of the tools that a WarDriver uses are the same tools that could be used by an attacker to gain unauthorized access to a wireless network. Since this is not the goal of a WarDriver, the methodology that users can use to ethically WarDrive is presented. In addition, complete coverage of WarDriving applications, such as NetStumbler, MiniStumbler; and Kismet, are covered.

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