Airodump-ng: A Powerful and Versatile Wireless Sniffer
How to Download Airodump-ng: A Tool for Wireless Network Security
If you are interested in wireless network security, you may have heard of airodump-ng, a tool that can capture and analyze wireless traffic. Airodump-ng is part of the aircrack-ng suite, a complete set of tools to assess WiFi network security. In this article, you will learn what airodump-ng is, why it is useful, and how to download and use it on your Linux system.
Introduction
Airodump-ng is a tool that can capture raw 802.11 frames, which are the basic units of data transmission in wireless networks. It can also display information about the access points and clients in range, such as their MAC addresses, encryption types, signal strengths, and channel numbers. Airodump-ng can save the captured packets in various formats for further processing by other tools, such as aircrack-ng, which can crack wireless encryption keys.
download airodump-ng
Wireless network security is the protection of the devices and data that use wireless networks from unauthorized access or damage. Wireless networks are vulnerable to various attacks, such as eavesdropping, spoofing, denial-of-service, and man-in-the-middle. These attacks can compromise the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of the network and its users.
Using airodump-ng can help you monitor and secure your own wireless network, as well as test the security of other wireless networks. You can use it to detect rogue access points, unauthorized clients, weak encryption, or suspicious traffic. You can also use it to perform penetration testing or ethical hacking on wireless networks, with permission from their owners.
What You Need to Use Airodump-ng
To use airodump-ng, you need three things: a compatible wireless card and driver, a Linux system with aircrack-ng suite installed, and a wireless network to monitor and/or attack.
A Compatible Wireless Card and Driver
Not all wireless cards and drivers support the features that are required for using airodump-ng. You need a wireless card that can operate in monitor mode, which allows it to capture all packets on a wireless channel without being associated with an access point. You also need a driver that can perform packet injection, which allows it to send arbitrary packets on a wireless channel.
To find out if your wireless card and driver are compatible with airodump-ng, you can check the hardware compatibility list on the . You can also use the airmon-ng check command to list the detected wireless interfaces and their drivers on your system.
A Linux System with Aircrack-ng Suite Installed
Aircrack-ng suite is a collection of tools that work together to perform various tasks related to wireless network security. Airodump-ng is one of these tools, but there are others that you may need or want to use, such as airmon-ng, aireplay-ng, aircrack-ng, airdecap-ng, etc.
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To install aircrack-ng suite on your Linux system, you have several options. You can download the latest version of the source code from the and compile it yourself. You can also use the package manager of your Linux distribution to install a pre-built package. You can also use a penetration testing distribution, such as Kali Linux, Parrot OS, or BlackArch, that already comes with aircrack-ng suite and other tools for wireless network security. To verify that you have successfully installed aircrack-ng suite, you can run the aircrack-ng --help command to display the usage and options of the main tool. You can also run the aircrack-ng --version command to display the version and license information of the suite. You can also check the /usr/local/bin or /usr/bin directory to see the available tools. A Wireless Network to Monitor and/or Attack
Finally, you need a wireless network that you want to monitor and/or attack using airodump-ng. This can be your own wireless network, or another wireless network that you have permission to test. You should never use airodump-ng or any other tool to perform illegal or unethical activities on wireless networks that you do not own or have authorization to access.
To find a wireless network that you can use, you can use the iwlist scan command to list the available wireless networks and their details on your system. You can also use the airodump-ng command without any options to display all the wireless networks and clients in range of your wireless card.
How to Use Airodump-ng
Now that you have everything you need to use airodump-ng, let's see how to use it in practice. The basic steps are as follows:
Put the wireless card in monitor mode using airmon-ng
Start airodump-ng with various options and filters
Interpret the output of airodump-ng and save the captured packets
How to Put the Wireless Card in Monitor Mode Using Airmon-ng
The first step is to put your wireless card in monitor mode, which allows it to capture all packets on a wireless channel without being associated with an access point. To do this, you can use the airmon-ng tool, which is part of the aircrack-ng suite.
The syntax of the airmon-ng command is as follows:
airmon-ng
The parameter specifies what action you want to perform, such as start, stop, or check. The parameter specifies the name of the wireless interface that you want to use, such as wlan0 or wlp2s0.
To put your wireless card in monitor mode, you need to use the start action. For example, if your wireless interface is wlan0, you can run the following command:
sudo airmon-ng start wlan0
This will create a new interface called wlan0mon, which is in monitor mode. You can verify this by running the iwconfig command and checking the mode of the interface.
How to Start Airodump-ng with Various Options and Filters
The next step is to start airodump-ng with various options and filters, depending on what you want to do. The syntax of the airodump-ng command is as follows:
airodump-ng [options]
The [options] parameter specifies various options that you can use to customize the behavior and output of airodump-ng. Some of the most common options are:
-c : Specify the channel number to listen on.
-w : Specify the prefix of the file name for saving captured packets.
--bssid : Filter by access point MAC address.
--essid : Filter by access point name.
--encrypt : Filter by encryption type (OPN, WEP, WPA, WPA2).
--manufacturer: Display manufacturer information for access points and clients.
--update : Specify the update interval for displaying information.
--band : Specify the frequency band to use (a = 5 GHz, b = 2.4 GHz, g = 2.4 GHz).
The parameter specifies the name of the wireless interface that is in monitor mode, such as wlan0mon or wlp2s0mon.
For example, if you want to listen on channel 6, save the captured packets with the prefix "test", filter by the access point with the MAC address 00:11:22:33:44:55, and display the manufacturer information, you can run the following command:
sudo airodump-ng -c 6 -w