I want to monitor wireless traffic that occurs between an iphone and my home linksys wireless router. The only computer I have at home is my windows laptop, so I would be loading wireshark on that? Can I really "see" what the person is looking at on the iphone? I have watched the videos on the website but I am a bit confused. I specifically need to track websites, and email log ins. thanks asked 25 Oct '10, 08:30  BobtheBuilder |
One Answer:
You need an adapter that can go into both promiscuous mode and monitor mode to be able to listen in on another device's wireless traffic. I also work on a Windows host, but I use an AirPcap adapter (www.cacetech.com) which can go into monitor mode. There's a video over at www.wiresharkbook.com/coffee showing adapter tests. If your WLAN adapter can't go into monitor mode then you will only see your own WLAN traffic and the 802.11 header will be replaced with an Ethernet header - doesn't do you much good. answered 25 Oct '10, 09:01  lchappell ♦ |
"If your WLAN adapter can't go into monitor mode" mainly means "if your OS, or the driver for your adapter, or *pcap, doesn't support putting the WLAN adapter into monitor mode", although some adapters might not support that in hardware. On Windows, you'll need an AirPcap adapter - WinPcap doesn't support monitor mode.
Note also that if the network uses WEP or WPA, you'll have to tell Wireshark what the password is for the network (and, in the case of WPA, you'll have to capture the initial EAPOL setup - try turning the iPhone off, starting the capture, and turning it back on again).