OpenWrt-based Access Point multi-channel WiFi Probe Request sniffer 📡
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The goal of this project is use off-the-shelves hardware, paired with the open source router Operating System (OS) OpenWrt, to perform WiFi Probe Request frame sniffing over multiple channels, more specifically in the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz spectrum. Acquired data is then saved to a remote shared folder using SMB and Tailscale to access the cloud in a safe and reliable way.
Our setup consisted in a Linksys MR8300 v1.1, running OpenWrt 22.03.2. The Linksys MR8300 is a MU-MIMO Tri-Band WiFi router, which has one 2.4GHz and two 5GHz WiFi Interfaces. We chose it for the generous amount of RAM (512 MB) and ROM (256 MB of NAND) present in the system, the powerful CPU (Qualcomm IPQ4019), as well as the great community support.
Additionally it has four 1 Gbps LAN ports, one 1 Gbps WAN port, an USB 3.0 interface and four external antennas. The device is equipped with a Bluetooth chip. With all that said, it is a good fit for a lot of similar projects and applications.
The Table of Hardware offered by the OpenWrt wiki gives us interesting insights on the hardware that powers this router.
Linksys MR8300 Router
We are interested in the Network Interface Cards (NICs) and their capabilities.
The first 5 GHz radio (
IPQ4019) is limited to ch. 64 and below. The second 5 GHz radio (QCA9888), is limited to ch. 100 and above. This is consistent with OEM firmware and is a result of the ART data and the data in the OEM firmware's cal data. This is perhaps due to RF design optimization and/or interoperation with 2.4 GHz, such as the two, shared antennas.
Considering that, with a little bit of research we can find the software interface arrangement:
radio0→ 5 GHz upper wireless phy interfaceradio1→ 2.4 GHz wireless phy interfaceradio2→ 5 GHz lower wireless phy interface
Both chipsets are monitor-mode capable.
The script uses the Scapy Python library to sniff WiFi Probe Requests and then save them as .pcap Network Packet Captures.
In order to install the required software, you can use the following command, accessing the router via SSH:
opkg update opkg install iw tcpdump tailscale kmod-fs-cifs kmod-nls-base jqThe list of known MAC address vendors can be found here.
Contributions are what make the open source community such an amazing place to learn, inspire, and create. Any contributions you make are greatly appreciated.
If you have a suggestion that would make this better, please fork the repo and create a pull request. You can also simply open an issue with the tag "enhancement". Don't forget to give the project a star! Thanks again!
- Fork the Project
- Create your Feature Branch (
git checkout -b feature/AmazingFeature) - Commit your Changes (
git commit -m 'Add some AmazingFeature') - Push to the Branch (
git push origin feature/AmazingFeature) - Open a Pull Request
Distributed under the GPLv3 License. See LICENSE for more information.
Giovanni Baccichet - @Giovanni_Bacci - github[at]baccichet.org