Social Source Commons

AirSnort is a wireless LAN (WLAN) tool which recovers encryption keys. AirSnort operates by passively monitoring transmissions, computing the encryption key when enough packets have been gathered.

Inspired by EtherPEG (though, not owning an Apple Macintosh, I've never actually seen it in operation), Driftnet is a program which listens to network traffic and picks out images from TCP streams it observes. Fun to run on a host which sees lots of web traffic.

Based on the OpenWRT project, the Freifunk firmware brings easy OLSR support to MIPS-based consumer access points, such as the Linksys WRT54G / WRT54GS / WAP54G, Siemens SE505, and others. By simply flashing one of these APs with the Freifunk firmware, you can rapidly build a self-forming OLSR mesh. Freifunk is not currently available for x86 architecture machines. It is maintained by Sven Ola of the Freifunk wireless group in Berlin. You can download the firmware from freifunk.net

Hotspot Shield creates a virtual private network (VPN) between your laptop and the wireless router. It acts as a firewall to protect your privacy on unsecured networks.

iStumbler is the leading wireless discovery tool for Mac OS X, providing plugins for finding AirPort networks, Bluetooth devices and Bonjour services with your Mac.

Release 98 includes a re-written AirPort plugin which now correctly reports signal for all current AirPort chip-sets, and provides more information about all networks. The info window is now resizable and the AirPort Inspector shows dBm values when available.

Kismet is an 802.11 layer2 wireless network detector, sniffer, and intrusion detection system. Kismet will work with any wireless card which supports raw monitoring (rfmon) mode, and can sniff 802.11b, 802.11a, and 802.11g traffic.

MacStumbler is a utility to display information about nearby 802.11b and 802.11g wireless access points. It is mainly designed to be a tool to help find access points while traveling, or to diagnose wireless network problems. Additionally, MacStumbler can be used for "wardriving", which involves co-ordinating with a GPS unit while traveling around to help produce a map of all access points in a given area.

Wireless Network surveying tool for Windows

OpenWrt is described as a Linux distribution for embedded devices.

Instead of trying to create a single, static firmware, OpenWrt provides a fully writable filesystem with package management. This frees you from the application selection and configuration provided by the vendor and allows you to customize the device through the use of packages to suit any application. For developer, OpenWrt is the framework to build an application without having to build a complete firmware around it; for users this means the ability for full customization, to use the device in ways never envisioned.

Pyramid is a small but flexible Linux distribution designed for advanced wireless networking projects. Pyramid Linux is the successor to Pebble Linux originally developed by Terry Schmidt at NYCWireless. If you are looking for a small powerful distro for wireless applications we suggest you try it out.

Wireless card support utility for Linux that offers front end help with WPA, WEP encryption, along with the ability to hop from one network to the other with ease.

Online tool for calculating link budget for wireless networks.