A Wigle Box Build with Kismet, RasPi, GPS and WiFi – Oh My.

Posted on | By BusySignal

WiFi War Driving Rig Build

First I need to thank the community for the support. With help from the Kismet Wireless docs page, twitter folks, and the great folks in the Discord group who answered questions and set some things straight. I didn’t do this without the help of others. Its important for me to be clear about that. Really nice. Super great people.

Parts List

OS Selection and Settings

I first started with the latest Raspberry OS,  however I had some difficulties with getting multiple Alpha cards to show in Kismet. There were a few rumblings in the KismetWireless Discord that others had heard or had similar experiences and a mention of moving to Ubuntu corrected this and moved and followed through.

Using the Raspberry Pi Imager (https://www.raspberrypi.org/software/) and the Ubuntu Server download ( Scroll down – on this link/page –  https://www.raspberrypi.org/software/operating-systems/) I burned the image to the microSD card.

After booting through the initial startup I performed some ubuntu settings and updates:

  • set the hostname

sudo hostnamectl set-hostname My-WiFi-PiDriver

  • Installing net-tools
    (I was just used to those commands)

sudo apt install net-tools

sudo apt install wpasupplicant

  • Generate the connection and set the services and restart to enable

wpa_passphrase <Your SSID> <Your WiFi Security Passcode> | sudo tee /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
(to be done above with out the <> brackets)

sudo wpa_supplicant -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -i wlan0

sudo cp /lib/systemd/system/wpa_supplicant.service

ExecStart=/sbin/wpa_supplicant -u -s -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -i wlan0
Restart=always

Installation of Kismet

Without recreating the entire install process which is well documented on the KismetWireless page – I used the packages install and used the line by line installation located here: https://www.kismetwireless.net/docs/readme/packages/

wget -O – https://www.kismetwireless.net/repos/kismet-release.gpg.key | sudo apt-key add –
echo ‘deb https://www.kismetwireless.net/repos/apt/git/focal focal main’ | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/kismet.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt install kismet

Enabling KismetWireless to run as a service and make sure it starts up when the RasPi is powered up and the OS Launches

sudo systemctl enable kismet

Editing the KismetWireless configuration for my set up:

You want to edit the kismet_site.conf file because it is NOT overwritten in updates of packages and builds – so it will retain your custom configuration – it overrides the kismet.conf and you use examples from kismet.conf to build your kismet_site.conf file.

sudo nano /etc/kismet/kismet_site.conf

Then we are looking for the following items:

  • GPS – locate the GPS Section in the config file.
    This kit is using the GPSD function, its broadcasting that localhost and port and we point Kismet at it;

gps=gpsd:host=localhost,port=2947,reconnect=true

  • WLAN Adapters.
    I have 6 adapters – you can skip this if you prefer to define adapter sources after kismet has launched from the webpage – I am running headless and wanted everything running with as little interventions as possible.
    (when I was testing, I only had 3 in here at first to make sure it was functioning as I needed and expected)

source=wlan1:type=linuxwifi
source=wlan2:type=linuxwifi
source=wlan3:type=linuxwifi
source=wlan4:type=linuxwifi
source=wlan5:type=linuxwifi
source=wlan6:type=linuxwifi

(CTRL-X, Y, Enter to exit)

As for all the other options – they are left at default – no other tweaks that I have done are proven for my setup so I am not documenting them right now. I would suggest however, you check into the channel hop and timing and possibly locking certain channels to certain wlan adapters so you can maximize efficiency.

Change the logging folder for Kismet so that the generated files are in a specific folder;

sudo nano /etc/kismetkismet_logging.conf

Locate the log_prefix section – change this to your desired location – I just made sure there was a folder under the user folder that I have set up:

log_prefix=/home/ubuntu/kismet

 

GPS Software

In order to get the GPS Lat/Long associated with the SSID’s that Kismet finds, the “gpsd” software requires install and config;

sudo apt install gpsd gpsd-clients

You will need to plug in your USB GPS device and then check for it to see which configuration hardware/device path it is under. I chose to play a game of which is missing or different an did the following command:

 ls /dev

This listed all the devices available to the OS and then plug the USB GPS device in and run the same command to identify what the new/changed configuration device is listed. I found my GPS Device listed as ” ttyUSB0 “. We need this for the gpsd configuration next.

With in the gpsd configuration you must confirm/set these items:

  • To edit the gpsd configuration file –

“sudo nano /etc/default/gpsd”

  • The configuration settings I have:

# Start the gpsd daemon automatically at boot time
START_DAEMON="true"
# Use USB hotplugging to add new USB devices automatically to the daemon
USBAUTO="true"
DEVICES="/dev/ttyUSB0"
GPSD_OPTIONS="-n -b"

First we’re making the gpsd start automatically.

Second we’re making sure we can plug and unplug the usb gps and make gpsd know to check again
Third we have to tell where the GPS is being seen by the OS
Fourth we are setting gpsd options that I need to cite the source for – my notes reference one thing but the internet references another. (sorry for that, but that is how I am set up and its working)

Customizing Kismet Web Page (Change GPS Icon, Enlarge icon)

This comes from “MrBill” Over at Twitter https://twitter.com/SecureThisNow
*** It will get overwritten in each package and build release – you need to make the change each time ***

Optional: Increase size and type of GPS Icon:
# sudo vi /usr/share/kismet/httpd/css/jquery.kismet.gps.css

(or if compiled from source)
# sudo vi /usr/local/share/kismet/httpd/css/jquery.kismet.gps.css

Change font-size to 30px

div.kg-top-icon {
display: inline-block;
font-size: 30px;
font-weight: normal; (edited)

# sudo vi /usr/share/kismet/httpd/js/jquery.kismet.gps.js

(or if compiled from source)
# sudo vi /usr/local/share/kismet/httpd/js/jquery.kismet.gps.js

Change ‘fa-crosshairs’ to fa-map-marker’

gpsicon = $(‘i.icon’, this);
if (gpsicon.length == 0) {
gpsicon = $(‘<i>’, {
class: “icon fa fa-map-marker kg-icon-base”
});

 

Photo Gallery of the equipment

 

 

 

 

Category: General Info