Wireless Security

Perhaps I'm one of the last few holdouts, staying wired to the Internet instead of computing wirelessly at home (like my friends, parents, etc.). Everyone seems to be getting laptops and $40 access points, which are way easier and cheaper than running Ethernet for most people. But, after reading this, you might want to keep your network wired, too.

Finding Wireless Networks

To see what I'm so worried about, the first step is to find some wireless networks. One of the best tools for this is Kismet, which comes in most distributions. Many distros ship with an old (2008) version, so to get started, download Kismet [1], unpack it, run the configure script, and make and install it. Note that Kismet needs root access to run because it talks directly to hardware, so you can run it either as root or with sudo, or you can install Kismet with suid root and add users to the kismet group. Please note that any user in this group will be able to fiddle with your network interfaces, so be careful.

cd /directory/kismet-source/
./config
make
make dep
make install

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