Wicrawl FAQ
From MRL Wiki
(note the official version is maintained here:
http://midnightresearch.com/wiki/index.php/FAQ)
[edit] Q: Why another wireless scanner?
A: Existing scanners are great and all (kismet, etc), but the problem is that just knowing if an Access Point exists isn't enough information these days. Not many people care just to see that a access point exists, they are more likely care about some other goal, like if they can get to the internet or not.
wicrawl adds a set of plugins that can determine this extra information for you so you don't have to check each access point individually. When you combine this with profiles, you can tune wicrawl to get only the information that you actually care about.
[edit] Q: What cards are supported?
A: Please see the following URL for more details. We are always interested in supporting as comprehensive a list of cards as possible. Please let us know if it is not working with your card.
http://midnightresearch.com/wiki/index.php/CardSupport
[edit] Q: I am using multiple cards, but I can't seem to get any that get to the netowrk. What's going on?
A: Make sure that the card that you are doing discovery from (by default the first card that is selected.) is of similar strength (wattage/antenna, etc) as the ones that you are running plugins through. If the card that you are doing discoverythrough is more powerful than the one that you're using to run plugins, you may never be able to associate to out of range APs (that are in range for the initial card)
[edit] Q: Is it legal to connect through other peoples networks?
A: The short answer is, to be completely safe, you're best off only connecting to networks that you own or control. You should set the SSID filter accordingly.
The long answer is that this is a grey area not covered by much case law. The following link is a paper that examines and describes current ethical and legal issues. Remember, at the end of the day though only you are responsible for your actions, so if you have any doubt about what you should be doing, make sure to filter the SSID list to APs that are controlled by you, or only use profiles that only do non-intrusive actions.
"How to avoid ethical and Legal issues in Wireless Network Discovery" http://www.sans.org/rr/whitepapers/wireless/176.php
[edit] Q: Can I use wicrawl as discovery only (like kismet, etc).
A: Yes, just use the discovery profile, and no additional plugins will be run. This should mimic Kismet usage, and you can still see all information through the GUI.
[edit] Q: I have configured a plugin to run, but it never does, what's up (yo)?
A: There are a couple possible ways to get into this situation:
- Perhaps you never get to the proper event level for your plugin. For example if you have a plugin that's set to run during the "have-internet" event level, but you can't get an address on the network, the plugin will never run.
- If your plugin for a given event level has a high run-level, and a plugin with a lower run-level (so it gets executed first) increases the event level before your plugin has a chance to run. We hope to add a way that a plugin can be configured to always run for a given event level, even if the event level has been changed.
[edit] Q: I can't see any interfaces in the GUI
A: Check that you're running as root, and that your interfaces are "up" (a la ifconfig ath0 up)
[edit] Q: What are "runs" as shown in the GUI?
A: A run is a given run-through of the Access Point queue. The queue is determined at the beginning of a run and will run until it's done. At that point depending on what scheduling you use, the plugin-engine will get a new queue of APs to run on. Runs occur even if you have discovery set to always run.
[edit] Q: How can I help?
A: There are a few ways:
- Link to us
- Spread the word, =)
- Send us bug reports
- Developer work, adding new plugins is easy, and a good place to start. Making our existing plugins more portable would also be a great help as we add support for more platforms.
- Distro support -- We'd like to be considered for being added into directly intodistribution specific repsitories, and this includes security live Distro's etc.Of course this is a lot of work to support all of these, so we're looking for some help.
- Check out the TODO list (in doc/TODO in the src), and see if there's anything that looks interesting to you.
[edit] Q: Who are those masked men?
A: This is the developer list: http://midnightresearch.com/projects/wicrawl/#developers
And this is Midnight Research Laboratories, the group that we belong to. If you're in the San Francisco Bay Area, try coming to a meeting some time, =) http://midnightresearch.com/