Technical Notes on hardware and software compatibility (Wireless
802.11b and 802.11g)
When installing WinAirsnort Outdoor Premium Release 2 for
your wireless adapter, you should normally follow the instructions
that are given in your Driver Installation Guide. However, there
are important technical notes on some of the supported adapters.
In the package that is provided with WinAirsnort, the following
drivers are present :
New Atheros driver 3.0,
Atheros AR5000 Driver,
Agere Driver,
Realtek Driver,
Symbol SYM24 Driver.
Some cards are not recognized by the Windows drivers above, even
though they have the correct chipset. In this case, open the hardware
manager, select your card, "Update the driver", select
"Install from a specific location", select "Don't
search, I will choose the driver to install", click "Have
disk", set the path to where the driver is located by default
(C:\Program Files\WinAirsnort\drivers) then uncheck "Show compatible
hardware", and finally choose the driver from the source provided.
Check "Yes" and update the driver with the one provided
with the package and run WinAirsnort.
In this section, you can find the answers to commonly asked questions,
and other supporting information for WinAirsnort. For any
other support queries, you are welcome to contact us directly.
| WinAirsnort - Frequently Asked Questions |
Q. What is WinAirsnort used for ? Is it
a solution for my wireless network ? What is the improvement
of this tool regarding other WinPcap, Packetyzer, Ethereal etc..?
» WinAirsnort 2.0 captures and analyzes network
packets on wireless networks. It gathers information about data
passing through your WiFi hardware card that is set on a "RF
monitor mode" and decodes the analyzed data, that means
the WEP and WPA key may be recovered. Ethereal, WinPcap, Packetyzer,
and derivated tools on Windows used to dump wireless traffic
are less powerful than WinAirsnort 2.0 because the wireless
card cannot be passed automatically on monitor mode. The power
of WinAirsnort is to put automatically the wireless "monitor
mode" card using hexadecimal address, to provide the user
with a decryption algorithm with an enhanced windows graphical
interface.
if you want to improve the security and integrity of your wireless
network, and protect against theoretical attacks, WinAirsnort
is made for you.
Q. What does mean the "monitor mode" ?
» The RF monitor mode allows the card to capture all
packets of all SSID's from the currently selected channel. So
in order to capture all traffic that the adapter can receive,
the adapter must be put into this mode. This way, WinAirsnort
is able to collect packets from a specific channel without ever
needing to transmit any packets. Therefore, WinAirsnort
can attempt to find the WEP key associated with that access
point.
Q. When I use WinAirsnort, I am not able to use my wireless
network to create outbound or inbound connections, TCP or UDP,
everything seems to be "frozen".
» A. This is normal and your wireless card is passed
on RF monitor mode. Your machine is not able to use that wireless
adapter for network traffic while listening with WinAirsnort.
You may stop the packet analyzer (Shift-T) and recover a normal
mode for your wireless card.
Q. Do I need special hardware to use WinAirsnort for
Windows ?
»A. You need a compatible wireless
adapter, this is the only hardware you need. You must also
install a special driver for your adapter. All necessary drivers
come with WinAirsnort. Once this driver has been installed,
your adapter will be put in passive, monitoring mode and will
no longer be able to communicate with other wireless hosts
or access points. To restore the standard functions of your
adapter, you would need to roll back to the original adapter's
driver, supplied by the vendor. If you would like to preserve
your wireless connectivity while using WinAirsnort,
consider installing two wireless adapters, one of which would
be used for monitoring, while the other would perform standard
network functions.
Q. My card is not on your list of supported hardware. What
are my options?
» A. There are many hardware vendors
that use Prism 2/2.5/3 chipsets (we currently support primarily
this chipset). Naturally, we cannot test all of these cards.
If your PCMCIA or PCI card is based on the Prism 2/2.5/3 chipset
and you are an advanced user who doesn't mind some testing,
please follow this link, there is a good chance that your
card will work with the existing driver. If your card is NOT
based on the Prism 2/2.5/3 chipset, you will have to wait
until we implement the support for other chipsets, however
we cannot give any guarantees or time estimates. Finally,
if you don't want to wait, you may want to buy a compatible
card, as they are not terribly expensive these days.
Q. I launched WinAirsnort, selected the wireless card
then selected the channel on automatic scanning mode, started
capturing, but no packets are displayed. Please Help !
» A. It is probably due to the driver
of your wireless card. Some cards are not recognized by the
Windows drivers, even though they have the correct chipset.
In this case, open the hardware manager, select your card,
"Update the driver", select "Install from a
specific location", select "Don't search, I will
choose the driver to install", click "Have disk",
set the path to where the driver is located by default (C:\Program
Files\WinAirsnort\drivers) then uncheck "Show compatible
hardware", and finally choose the driver from the source
provided. Check "Yes" and update the driver with
the one provided with the package and run WinAirsnort.
Q. Does WinAirsnort run on multi-processor computers?
»A. Yes, it does.
Q. Under Windows 2000/XP I'm often logged on as a user without
administrative privileges. Do I have to log off and then re-logon
as the administrator to be able to run WinAirsnort
?
»A. Yes, Administrators should have
privileges to use WinAirsnort, as the wireless card
is passed on RF Monitor Mode... That's All !
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