[Winpcap-users] List different Access Points (AP), MAC addresses and/or signal strenght

[NBK]

Thank you for the information.

Actually, I ended up using Microsoft Native Wifi API. The only problem is
that only works from WinVista.



On Tue, Apr 12, 2011 at 1:25 AM, Guy Harris <guy at alum.mit.edu> wrote:

>
> On Apr 11, 2011, at 5:17 PM, Gianluca Varenni wrote:
>
> > I’m not actually sure that Cain uses WinPcap to do that.
> >
> > I think that Cain does that by either using AirPcap or the Microsoft
> wi-fi APIs to list the access points.
> >
> > Have you asked the cain authors how they do that?
>
> They say on their Web site how they do that:
>
>        http://www.oxid.it/ca_um/topics/wireless_scanner.htm
>
> "The active scanner opens the wireless network adapter using the Winpcap
> protocol driver then it uses the "PacketRequest" function of the same driver
> to communicate with the wireless network card. This API can be used from the
> Windows User Mode to perform a query/set operation on an internal variable
> of the network card driver.
>
> BOOL PacketRequest ( LPADAPTER AdapterObject, BOOL Set, PPACKET_OID_DATA
> OidData);
>
> ...from Winpcap documentation
> not all the network adapters implement all the query/set functions. There
> is a set of mandatory OID functions that is granted to be present on all the
> adapters, and a set of facultative functions, not provided by all the cards
> (see the Microsoft DDKs to see which functions are mandatory). If you use a
> facultative function, be careful to enclose it in an if statement to check
> the result.
>
> Windows DDK provides a set of mandatory WLAN OIDs that should be supported
> by all Miniport drivers for IEEE 802.11; they are all defined in
> "ntddndis.h" file (from Windows XP SP1 DDK) and documented here.
>
> The scan command is sent to the wireless card using the
> OID_802_11_BSSID_LIST_SCAN and the following function ..."
>
> which translates as "we use WinPcap, but we don't use it to capture
> traffic, we use it as a userland interface to NDIS for sending OID requests
> to the adapter driver".  It's digging up information that Windows has
> gathered about access points.
>
> They can also use AirPcap to scan by watching network traffic go by:
>
> "The passive scanner requires the AirPcap adapter from CACE Technologies
> which enables the raw capture of 802.11 frames by mean of its AirPcap
> drivers. The scanner recognize wireless Access Points (upper list) and
> clients (lower list) decoding 802.11b/g packets that travels on the air in a
> completely passive way. The "Channel Hopping" feature changes the frequency
> of the adapter every second and let you discover wireless networks on
> different channels."
>
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