that was enlightening

So the mail came today. In it was my new alfa (1000mw) wireless adapter. I hooked it up a little while ago.

It took a while to figure out how to make it work. First to make sure it would turn on. dmesg, lsusb, iwconfig all saw it. Sadly I'm used to ifup and ifdown. Which only work if the interface has a configuration file. I was able to get up with ifconfig.

Then I wanted to get it working with Kismet. After googling around, even though it's the rtl8187, I found you have to use the rt8180 capture device in the kismet config. I copied this line from a forum posting (changed wlan to 1 because 0 is the built in, and using it for net connection):

source=rt8180,wlan1,RTL

Then I got kismet to work. I ran it for about 30 minutes.... I found 92 networks (networks as kismet's info display on the side claimed). Some of them were probe devices.

But it was interesting to see what I could see from my laptop sitting in my bed.

I really think I'm going to take this to work tomorrow (including the laptop) and see what can see.

And I'm even more excited to take the wireless pen-testing class. Not because I have 92 networks to attack, that would be unethical, but because there were 8 to 10 boxes probing and I want to make sure they won't be using my wireless to surf porn. (IE use the skills from OSWP to secure my home wifi).

In case you're wondering, I live in a 1000+ unit apartment complex. I'm sure if I wasn't on the ground floor (took ground because I was afraid of dropping kettlebells), I would have seen even more. I might have to go over to the tower (7 floor unit), and see if I can get roof access, and then see how many networks there are.