KisMAC supports several third party PCMCIA cards – Orinoco, PrismII, Cisco Aironet, Atheros and PrismGT. USB Prism2 is supported as well, and USB Ralink support is in development. All of the internal AirPort hardware is supported as well.

System Requirements

• Mac OS 10.4
• A Mac with a supported PCMCIA, USB or internal AirPort

Features

• Reveals hidden/cloaked/closed SSIDs
• Shows logged in Clients (with MAC Addresses, IP addresses and signal strengths)
• Mapping and GPS support
• Can draw area maps of network coverage
• PCAP import and export
• Support for 802.11b,g,n
• Different attacks against encrypted networks
• Deauthentication attacks
• AppleScript-able
• Kismet drone support (capture from a Kismet drone)

Active mode, also referred to as managed mode, sends probe requests and is pretty boring.
Passive mode is more commonly known as monitor mode, and passively monitors what’s already in the air without interfering in it.
Active attacks like deauth and reinjection (where supported) require your device to be in monitor or passive mode.

You can download KisMAC here:

KisMAC

Or read more here.

The fact is Windows is getting ripped apart with viruses, spamware, spyware, zombie clients, trojans worms and whatever else you can think of.

Mac and Linux aren’t (at the moment), there are already Bluetooth viruses, so why not Linux and Mac..

Some may say it’s because they are inherently more secure, the architecture and user privelege seperationg means it’s hard for any kind of malware to infect the system…plus they don’t come with crap like Internet Exploder that’s tied into the operating system.

There have been a couple of worms for Linux, mostly praying on Apache, and then the OpenSSL bug that allowed you to get access (combined with the kernel flaw in 2.4 you could easily get root access).

eWeek asks, What will Apple do when the malware comes? Which inevitably it will..

The release in the last few days of malware for the Mac and Linux underscore some old issues about how it is possible to have malware on those platforms. I have some new thoughts though. I’ve begun to wonder what Apple would do if a real problem developed.

To be very clear, a real problem has not yet developed, and Inqtana.A and Leap.A are not a real problem, except to the extent that they may be bellwethers. They are more interesting for what they suggest than what they actually do.

As with Windows, a lot of it is a consumer issue, and down to education.

With Mac, the user does run as a non-priveleged user by default, but when installing any software they can just pop in the Admin password and it’ll install.

It’s all about social engineering, making the user believe they want it, it’s something ‘cool’ or useful.

When good social engineering attacks are developed for the Mac, the same thing will happen. It’s not hard to imagine Web sites and e-mails offering programs for the Mac that do more than they claim to do.

Just in terms of adware, there may be some benefit to being able to deliver known Mac users to advertisers, but for the most part the “value” of infecting the user is the same: to spread itself, and perhaps to create a Mac botnet.

Few have tried to write Malware for OSX yet, but I guess it will happen, the question is are Apple prepared?