Wireless Network Monitoring Tool - Kismet

Kismet is a network detector, packet sniffer, and intrusion detection system for 802.11 wireless LANs. Kismet will work with any wireless card which supports raw monitoring mode, and can sniff 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, and 802.11n traffic. The program runs under Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and Mac OS X. The client can also run on Microsoft Windows, although, aside from external drones (see below), there’s only one supported wireless hardware available as packet source.


Wireless Network Monitoring Tool

ºEthereal/Tcpdump compatible data logging
ºAirsnort compatible weak-iv packet logging
ºNetwork IP range detection
ºBuilt-in channel hopping and multicard split channel hopping
ºHidden network SSID decloaking
ºGraphical mapping of networks
ºClient/Server architecture allows multiple clients to view a single
ºKismet server simultaneously
ºManufacturer and model identification of access points and clients
ºDetection of known default access point configurations
ºRuntime decoding of WEP packets for known networks
ºNamed pipe output for integration with other tools, such as a layer3 IDS like Snort
ºMultiplexing of multiple simultaneous capture sources on a single Kismet instance
ºDistributed remote drone sniffing
ºXML output
ºOver 20 supported card types

Kismet differs from other wireless network detectors in working passively. Namely, without sending any loggable packets, it is able to detect the presence of both wireless access points and wireless clients, and to associate them with each other. It is also the most widely used and up to date open source wireless monitoring tool.

An explanation of the headings displayed in Kismet. Kismet also includes basic wireless IDS features such as detecting active wireless sniffing programs including NetStumbler, as well as a number of wireless network attacks.

Kismet features the ability to log all sniffed packets and save them in a tcpdump/Wireshark or Airsnort compatible file format. Kismet can also capture “Per-Packet Information” headers. Kismet also features the ability to detect default or “not configured” networks, probe requests, and determine what level of wireless encryption is used on a given access point.

In order to find as many networks as possible, kismet supports channel hopping. This means that it constantly changes from channel to channel non-sequentially, in a user-defined sequence with a default value that leaves big holes between channels (for example, 1-6-11-2-7-12-3-8-13-4-9-14-5-10). The advantage with this method is that it will capture more packets because adjacent channels overlap.


Kismet also supports logging of the geographical coordinates of the network if the input from a GPS receiver is additionally available.

Download Kismet