Sniffing Wirelessly in Linux

Sniffing in Linux is simply a matter of enabling monitor mode on the wireless NIC and firing up Wireshark. Unfortunately, the procedure for enabling monitor mode differs with each model of wireless NIC, so I can't offer a definitive guide for it here. Your best bet is to do a quick Internet search for your NIC model for specific details.

One of the more common ways to enable monitor mode in Linux is through its built-in wireless extensions. You can access these wireless extensions with the iwconfig command. If you type iwconfig from the console, you should see results like this:

$iwconfig Eth0 no wireless extensions Lo0 no wireless extensions Eth1 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"Tesla Wireless Network" Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462 ...

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