Not seeing AP HW info (MAC, radio, etc)

[bgrigg]

I stumbled (not pun intended) upon your product after not being able to get the new Netstumbler to work with Win7 (32 or 64). VIS works great on my 64bit PC as well as the 32bit laptop (both 7). But after doing a scan on the laptop (Broadcom 4322AG (ABG & draft N)) I realized it wasn't reading the hardware info from the WAP's, but on the desktop (Linksys WUSB600N ver 1), it was reading the info fine, and bringing up the hardware vendors. I checked all the settings, they were the same on both. Then I thought it might be the WiFi card. So since the Linksys is USB, I plugged it into the laptop, and sure enough, read everything fine.

So my question is, is there something to look for in WiFi cards and/or drivers that is preventing this from working with the Broadcom chip?

On a side note, whatever the latest beta is (that gets autodownloaded when prompted), doesn't work on either my 32-bit laptop or 64-PC. The adapters just show up as 0 or 1, with no description of what the actual cards are.

Thanks,
Brian

[pferland]

It seems that you have "Native Wifi" mode enabled.
Just go to Options-> Use Native Wifi
Make sure it is not checked.

Here is a screen shot if you need it.
I'm running XP here at work, so mine is force-checked.

native.PNG (19.59 KiB) Viewed 25944 times

Native Wifi in windows doesn't return as much info as NetSH does, but it is in Vistumbler as a backwards compatibility for WinXP.

[bgrigg]

Wow, yeah, that did it. But I could have sworn I compared the settings on both machines. The only thing I can think of is that when I reinstalled it, it reset it, and turned Native Mode off. Also, the Beta seems to work on both now.

Thanks for the tip...from a fellow Mass res.

[pferland]

Nice to see more Massachusians in the Wardriving scene. If you dont mind me asking, what part of mass? And have you imported any into the Database?

[bgrigg]

Merrimack Valley, but not wardriving...at least not yet anyway. FiOS finally just came into our condo just over a month ago, and I so realized that the routers they install, although are capable of WPA/WPA2, default to WEP. Not only that, the algorythm they use is published on the Internet, so if the SSID isn't changed from the default (based off MAC address I guess), you enter the SSID on the web, and it tells you 1 of 2 possible WEP keys. I tried it, sure enough, it works. I was going to try to see how easy it is to crack WEP, but most of the tools are Linux, I'm a Win guy. I did find a vid on Youtube where a kid shows you how to using VMWare workstation, and downloading a linux image, that way VMWare takes care of the Linux/Windows driver issue on the NIC. But for some reason I still can't get VMWare to see either the onboard Broadcom or the USB Linksys.

I spoke to a couple board members about putting something in the newsletter this month, and they agreed. So I walked around our Condo the other day and did a survey, pumped it into Excel. 82 networks, 6 of which have NO passwords, 49 have WEP, the remaining 27 are WPA or WPA2. But then I also wanted to see which percentage of those are VZ's Actiontec's, and see what percentage of those are the default WEP or if any had been changed. So I'll go around tonight and do that, now that you got that working for me.

[pferland]

Yeah I wouldn't ever recommend using the default anything (software or hardware) from your ISP, unless its a strait up modem only. I would recommend a Linksys WRT-54GL with DD-WRT flashed to it.
Backtrack is a good OS to do security tests on your own network. WEP isn't hard at all to crack, only takes a few minutes. There are a few tutorials out there if you do a Google search. VMware will never be able to see the on-board WiFi cards because they are PCI, to get Workstation to see USB devices you have to add a USB hub to the VM config. Dont forget to have it auto connect to VM if in focus.

[ACalcutt]

Hmm... I guess i will have to check out why native wifi mode isn't showing adapters. thanks for letting me know.

-Andrew

[bgrigg]

I'll have to look into the VMWare USB hub thing. What do you mean by 'native mode not showing adapters'? It was showing adapters, just when I was doing the scan it wasn't showing the MAC address of the AP's it was discovering...which you already explained is the way it's designed. Unless you meant the comment I made about the beta, where it wasn't showing the adapters, and it was just displaying '0' or '1'...but after a uninstall and reinstall...that cleared up. I just did another walk with the latest beta and picked up 16 additional WAP's (maybe because people shut them off if they're not around??).

Regarding not using the ISP supplied H/W, I definitely agree with you. But you obviously don't have FiOS, as you're forced to use their router (sort of). Unlike Comcast (and most other cable/dsl), the modem is also a router (which is fine). BUT, if you also have TV service through FiOS, the STB's need to communicate through the Internet (to get the guide data, on deman, allow for features like remotely scheduling DVR from work, etc) even though they're connected to the wall via standard coax (like Comcast). So if you connect another router (Linksys, whatever), everything works fine, except you have no guide data on your TV/STB's (etc.) because the Linksys is now blocking the STB's from the Internet. This is well documented on the Internet. The aproved VZ method for using your own 'router', is by turning off the firewall features of YOUR router (NOT theirs), turning off WiFI on THEIR router, and then using the WiFi on your router. The biggest reason for this is for Wireless N (as their router is only B/G), although they do have a N version coming, no ETA on it though. But then still their router is doing the firewall portion, so if there's some hole or some feature you want that it doesn't support, you're SOL. Fortunately it's a pretty good box/feature set (and I've seen quite a few different ones).

All right...time to make dinner before I pass out!

[ACalcutt]

My mistake. I went to check out your problem but forgot I took the wireless card out of my computer, so mine showed as not having any adapters. As far as i can see it works right in native wifi mode or netsh mode.

[bgrigg]

Yeah, I don't know what happened a few days ago, but with Native Off yesterday, I was able to pickup all the MAC addresses fine. Although how to we update your MAC address DB? It didn't know about some FIOS Actiontecs or Linksys & Belkin. I know how to manually in the software, but for on your end so future versions...unless you just pull from an online DB? Also, why is AES showing up a CCMP now? It was showing up as AES before.

FYI:
No Password 15 15.46%
WEP 49 50.52%
WPA 15 15.46%
WPA2 18 18.56%
Total 97
Total Non-Secure 64 65.98% (Just WEP and No PW, didn't include WPA)
FiOS 35 36.08%
FiOS WEP 33 94.29%
FiOS WPA2 2 5.71% (Just one other person other than me!)

[ACalcutt]

Native wifi mode reports a little differently. Because it doesn't have mac addresses or channels it does things like merge all access with the same name and security (this would explain why you got more on you second scan). Also, since the manufacurer and labels need the mac address those don't work either.

By MAC Address DB do you mean the Manufacture list? Our manufacturer list is based off an older version of http://standards.ieee.org/regauth/oui/oui.txt . I should probably do an update, its been a while (the Manufactuers.db hasn't been updated in 14 months acording to our SVN http://vistumbler.svn.sourceforge.net/v ... /Settings/ ). Phil made a php script to take the oui.txt file and put it into a more workable format ( http://vistumbler.svn.sourceforge.net/v ... iew=markup )

AES vs CCMP is just a diffence between native wifi and netsh. CCMP uses AES encrption (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCMP)

[ACalcutt]

I updated the Manufactures DB. See if this has the missing manufacturers. I will probably send it out as an update later today.

Put Manufacturers.db in your \Vistumbler\Settings\ directory (make sure vistumbler is closed before copying it)

EDIT: I have sent this out as an update

[pferland]

I copied the updated Manufactures array, to WiFIDB, so if you import them into the database, they will have the proper Manufacture Info.

-Phil

[kledaric]

Hello,

I have the same problem but i can not change this option because its locked. How can I change it?
My wireless device is an Atheros AR928X (Packet Scheduler Miniport) and my os is Windows XP pro v2002 SP3 englisch and I use Vistumbler v10.1 Beta 2.

thx for your help!

[ACalcutt]

Native wifi mode will be your only option in xp. XP doesn't have the netsh command the other method uses.

[adycast]

I have the same problem under Win 7. In the Options tab, the native mode is checked but I cannot unchecked it because it is grey out. my wireless adapter is an ATHEROS AR5B95 wireless network adapter. I have down loaded the manufacturers.db file and installed it in the "setting" directory; but the result was the same. Still unable to uncheck the native mode. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

[ACalcutt]

are you using windows xp or using xp compatibility? If so you will be forced into native mode (since xp doesn't have the netsh command)

[adycast]

I am running Windows 7 Starter edition on an ACER one, I have verified and "netsh" is avalaible as a command. Thanks

[ACalcutt]

Did you also verify that xp compatibilty mode wasn't turned on?

[adycast]

I did not know that the starter edition had sometimes compatiblity issues with certains program, but when it is the case it bring a compatibility screen assitant, which I never had or saw with any of the old programs I installed. If the program install properly and you think that is a compatibility issue, one run utility to resolve compatibility issue, I did just that and bingo I was able to change the wifi native mode. After I did change the mode and restarted Vistumbler, I coulnot see any wlan but I still could use the internet. I looked around and discovered that Vistumbler had chosen the Microsoft Virtual wifi miniport instead of my atheros adapter. Changed it and the problem is solve. Thanks for your help