The sys admin's daily grind – Netdiscover

Swords to Plowshares

Article from Issue 170/2015
Author(s):

This month, sys admin Charly grabs the fairly ancient Netdiscover wardriving tool and takes care of his neighbors' WiFi networks.

"Charly, can you take a look at this? My (choose a computer term) isn't working!" This is a situation that eventually anyone who "does something in IT" gets into. By now, friends and neighbors have realized that I cannot help them with Windows problems. If their WiFi network is acting up, however, there's no escape.

So, in response, I connect my laptop to my neighbors' wireless LAN and check out the network. With what? Well, normally with Netdiscover [1]. This tool goes back to the days when wardriving was cool and widespread. For our younger readers: Wardrivers would walk or drive through the neighborhood armed with a laptop looking for open or poorly protected wireless networks and, for example, drop the King James version of the Bible into the confused owner's printer spooler just as a little warning.

Netdiscover supports active and passive modes. In passive mode, it does not send packets but evaluates the network traffic flying by. In a WLAN, in which all the devices transmit on the same radio channel, you can accumulate a fairly extensive list of devices in a short time. You launch Netdiscover in passive mode by typing

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