Analyzing and Managing Networks
31
Using
the terminal, let’s take a look at some wireless devices with
iwconfig
(see Listing 3-2).
kali >
iwconfig
wlan0 IEEE 802.11bg ESSID:off/any
Mode:Managed Access Point: Not Associated Tx-Power=20 dBm
--
snip--
lo
no wireless extensions
eth0 no wireless extensions
Listing 3-2: Using iwconfig to get information on wireless adapters
The output here tells us that the only network interface with wireless
extensions is
wlan0
, which is what we would expect. Neither
lo
nor
eth0
has
any wireless extensions.
For
wlan0
, we learn what 802.11 IEEE wireless
standards our device is
capable of:
b
and
g
, two early wireless communication standards. Most wire-
less
devices now include
n
as well (
n
is the latest standard).
We also learn from
iwconfig
the mode of the wireless extension (in this
case,
Mode:Managed
, in contrast to monitor or promiscuous mode). We’ll need
promiscuous mode for cracking wireless passwords.
Next, we can see that the wireless adapter is not connected (
Not Associated
)
to an access point (AP) and that its power is 20 dBm,
which represents the
strength of signal. We’ll spend more time with this information in Chapter 14.
