KisMAC is an opensource and free stumbler/scanner application for Mac OS X. It has an advantage over MacStumbler/iStumbler/NetStumbler in that it uses monitor mode and passive scanning.
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:
Or read more here.
net2004eng says
KisMAC and Kismet (for Linux) are awesome free RF Monitoring tools. Anyone who has ever used Netstumbler (the Active Scanner many use if running Windows) will be delighted by the stealth that KisMAC and Kismet provide…plus, these tools are actively maintained, and have an active community which supports and develops the products…
net2004eng says
One other note….KisMAC is of course only for MAC’s, where Kismet is only for *nix…but KisWin also exists:
http://www.renderlab.net/projects/wrt54g/kiswin.html
mumble says
The problem with KisWin is device support. Virtually no windows drivers support rfmon mode, making real scanners difficult to write for that platform. Kismet has had windows support for a long time, but hardware support has been its undoing. In fact, Kismet will actually run on windows hardware with rfmon enabled using the one card that has rfmod drivers for that platform. (I believe it’s a specialty card for security work…but don’t quote me.)
Pantagruel says
Let’s see if I can persuade Santa to drop a MacBook Pro down the chimnee, all other OSses are covered ;)
Indeed a very handy addition when concerning stealth and the naming convention is simply fun, Kismet, KisMac and KisWin. Not that stealth is really needed, the amount of open AP’s is big enough to hop about without too much of a risk of being caught (netstumbler gives me 7 with average and above signal strength), a reboot is usually enough to switch to another AP. Within the restricted environment of my job it’s a cool app and has helped (Kismet) to find ‘rogue’ AP’s without arousing suspision.
goodpeople says
Good to know that there are also good sectools available for the mac. One of my students is using a Mac and I have been wondering about the software to use for my classes.
Pantagruel says
@ goodpeople
The underlying OS of OS X is bsd like, it will mean some code changes to get it running.
According to Apple (http://www.apple.com/macosx/technology/unix.html) it’s fully unix compliant
net2004eng says
@mumble
I was going to mention this actually after I made the post, about rfmon support for windows. You can purchase a product, like AirPcap: http://www.cacetech.com/products/airpcap.htm
but the cost is prohibitive for most…None the less, another category where Windows is slacking…
Sir Henry says
I will have to give KisMac another shot. I tried it out with 10.4 a few months back with a d-link usb wireless adapter, but for some reason, the drivers just did not work. Is this version a new release?
Sir Henry says
Ah, it is the same release as before, but it looks as though they are beginning to do more with it now that they have moved their servers to Switzerland. The one aspect about the Airport cards is that on the Intel Macbook/Pro models, they cannot be put into passive mode, thus requiring a usb nic that has supported drivers. I do have a supported D-Link nic, but the drivers are obsolete and appear to crash the card every time I try to put it into passive mode. Back the to the drawing board, I guess.
goodpeople says
@Pantagruel,
I don’t wory too much about availability of the right tools. Like you said, OSX’s bsd background sort of garuantees anything to be there.
Pantagruel says
@ goodpeople
I will shortly find out (X-mas holidays will give me some time hopefully, after relatives/etc have gone). I got myself a Mac Mini (Santa sort of told me no PB this year :( ) and am now looking for a suitable wireless adapter (usb) since the onboard doesn’t appear to work with kisMac.
Apart from that there will some digging into the OS X-es BSD background.
Sir Henry says
@Pantagruel
I bought the D-Link DWL-122 for use with KisMac. It is probably the most sought after by Mac users for KisMac. The only problem is finding a firmware that works properly with it. I had some down time a few months back and was playing around with the latter, but have since been too busy to get back to it. If I have time over the holiday, I will let you know what I find.
eM3rC says
This with netstumbler is an amazing program. There was a section of 60 Minutes dedicated to the use of this program to pick up mall wi-fi networks so hackers could steal peoples credit card numbers while the information was being transfered between the atm card slider thing and the modem to process the credit card information.