Simulate multiple MACs from a single physical Wi Fi adapter - wifi

For a simulation project, I am trying to simulate multiple MAC addresses from a single physical adapter. What I basically want is to send raw WiFi frames (both, data as well as management) for two virtual MAC addresses so that they both associate with a wireless AP. To the AP they should appear as if two different wireless devices/adapters (with different MAC addresses) have associated with it and are sending traffic. I just wanted to confirm if this seems feasible. I have achieved the same thing with wired LAN in the past but want to confirm the same for WiFi.
Thanks,

Yes, it's feasible. Make sure the virtual MAC addresses aren't random but in an acceptable format - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_address, otherwise the AP might reject the connection attempt.

Related

How to link/pair HTML 5 with a hardware device?

I have two entities which I would like to be able to start a communication:
Hardware Device Using Atmel ATSAMS70 and WINC1500 Wifi Module
HTML 5 App
The idea to have a HTML 5 app is to be able to communicate easily with most of the commercial devices like: Windows computers, Android Phones, Mac OSX computer and iOS devices. Apart from that, I would avoid working with native code at all.
Currently, they can talk with each other using WebSockets but somehow the IP address of the custom board has to be known from HTML 5 to initiate the communication.
In order to do this, I can think of 3 options:
Using WebRTC I can get the local IP address of the browser and then I could do a scan of the local devices considering a 255.255.255.0 network mask.
Have an external server that the hardware device can send its local address which will be later retrieved by HTML 5.
Using Bonjour or some sort of device discovery service between the board and HTML5.
I could not find a way to achieve #3 but #2 seems feasible to me. #1 is what I am doing now, but WebRTC is currently not supported on iOS.
So, is there any other better possibility to achieve this communication?
You don't mention how the WINC1500 unit is being connected to the network but presumably this is in STA mode (acting as a wifi station rather than becoming a software access point or part of an ad-hoc network) and is being provided with its IP details through an existing access point?
Ordinarily I'd suggest that once connected, the device ought to start indicating its availability on the network via a regular UDP broadcast on a specific port but my (admittedly limited) understanding of WebSockets it is that it creates TCP connections. The only implementation of Bonjour that I've seen uses UDP messaging too, that may be why you've had trouble with your third approach.
Your second approach seems more likely to work well. A server at a known (or discoverable) IP on the local network which allows the Atmel device to register itself (and its IP address) and also allows other applications (your HTML 5 WebSockets applications) to request that connection information to allow them to create the WebSocket TCP connections they need.
I suppose that doesn't really answer your question as to "Is there a better way?", other than to say "Not that I can think of, your second approach looks good to me...". Sorry! Sounds like a very interesting project, overall,

Find MAC Addresses of devices in range of Wifi router with programatically

How can I programtically get the MAC address of WiFi router.
i want the command or the program in c which will list only the mac address of devices which are connected to the my WiFi router. it it possible to get when i know the IP address of the router?
Getting the MAC of the WiFi router on which you are connected (or try to connect) is probably possible if you have access to low level network frame.
Now it looks you are indeed willing to get the MAC of ALL the devices connected to the WiFi router, which is another thing ! Unless the router has some building functionality that gives you this list (like an HTML summary, I don't know if openWrt provide this), I don't think by running a program in C on a client, you would be able to get the MACs of other connected clients !
But in case the router as the information in an html page (eg : from a remote administration), you might try to simulate login to administration, get this page then parse the page to get the MACs... from a C prog..
Taking your problem from another side, if you have a wireless adapter you can set in monitor mode, you could sniff the wireless traffic on the channel(s) opened by your targeted WiFi router, and list the distinct client connected. Have a look to BackTrack's ssidsniff ?

How to get the IP address of the associated access point on an iOS device

Use Case:
We have an iOS application where you can run a network test between an iOS device and its associated wireless access point to test throughput. The app can get the IP address of the iOS device just fine, but the user has to type in the IP of the access point.
Problem:
The task is to get the IP address of the associated access point, and pre fill it for the user, hence avoiding user intervention there.
My Approach:
Find out the Mac Address/BSSID of the access point.
I do this by employing the Captive Network API.
Issue an ARP request to find out the IP associated to the access point.
I haven't been able to accomplish this as of yet. Google and SO search has kind of lead me to a dead end here. Here are some similar questions:
How do I query the ARP table on iPhone? AND
ARP Requests on iPhone
Question:
What is the right way to do this? In fewer words, what is the best way to get the IP address of the access point an iOS device is connected to.
A WiFi access point is not necessarily an IP-capable device (although many of them are, but for configuration, not communications, purposes).
Even if you do get the actual access point's IP address, how are you going to test the throughput? You could send ICMP Echo requests, but that will just give you instantaneous round-trip times, not throughput, and many IP devices, for security reasons, are configured to not respond to ICMP ECHO requests.
BSSID is unique for each SSID on each Radio and it differs from the Access Point’s Mac Address. If you compare them you can see last characters of Mac Adresses are different for BSSID and the AccessPoint.

Can't see another computer in WiFi

I am trying to do a little experiment and I'm getting pretty odd results that I can't explain. I came to my University with my friend, we both brought our laptops and we connected to the same WiFi. But from some reason, our computers couldn't communicate with each other. For example, I couldn't ping him, and I when I did an ARP Scan to find all the hosts on the LAN I didn't find him. He did the same. He couldn't ping me and he didn't find my laptop when he did an ARP scan. Yet, there were many other devices on the LAN that both of us could ping and that we both found in our ARP scan. The University may be big, but we sat just next to each other.
I know that the WiFi on the university may be complex, but yet I have no explanations of what is happening. We sit next to each other, connect to the same WiFi(same Access Point MAC), we both see many same devices in our LAN, yet we can't see each other. Anyone has any idea of what may be happening? Why can't we see/ping each other while we are on the same LAN?
Thanks! :)
The wireless access point probably has a security setting of "Wireless Isolation Within SSID" turned on. This function does exactly what you describe. It allows all authenticated users to see machines on the LAN, but not other wireless machines on the same access point.
Reconfigure your router and make some settings like this
LAN DHCP=Enable
Wireless Authentication type=WPA-PSK/WPA2-PSK
Encryption=AES
After this setting delete all Wireless network of router listed in your PC. And than connect, It will works. you can ping your both PC together.
Because you are connected to an infrastructure mode access point (99% of APs), in order to send packets to another device your laptop sends the packet to the AP (to the distribution system), and then the AP sends the packet to your friend (from the distribution system). You cannot connect 'directly' to your friend.
The AP can direct whether or not wireless clients can see each other - depending on the manufacturer this can be implemented in many different ways. You could talk to your system administrator about why/how this policy works.

any way to detect iPads or iPhones on wireless network? bonjour?

I am trying to detect Apple devices connected to a wireless network. This is relatively simple using Bonjour, however I am also trying to detect what kind of device it is. Like, a MacBook Air, a MacBook Pro, a MacPro, an iPhone, iPod, or an iPad.
I have found that Bonjour requests to MacBook's and MacPros include an "ADDITIONAL SECTION" response to the query which includes the model:
;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
Q9550._device-info._tcp.local. 10 IN TXT "model=MacPro3,1"
and
;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
Air._device-info._tcp.local. 10 IN TXT "model=MacBookAir4,2"
From testing an iPhone (3GS and 4), an iPod touch, and an iPad2, all of the iDevices only respond with their name:
;; ANSWER SECTION:
111.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa. 10 IN PTR gmPad2.local.
Clearly, the name may not reflect the device. So, I would not like to try to extrapolate the type of device from the name. Does anyone know any other ways to detect iDevice types?
Edit: just to be clear, the command I am using is: dig #224.0.0.251 -p5353 -x 192.168.1.111 ... substituting the IP address of the Apple device
Use port 62078
The most reliable indicator I have seen is whether you can connect to IP port 62078.
Port 62078 is used for the "iphone-sync" service, and I don't think MacBooks use it. This port always appears to be open for the iPhones and iPads on our (very small) network.
Possibly (but not probably) there are messages you can send to the port to sniff out more details...
I think the official xml list of port assignements is here, although it wasn't working for me just now:
http://www.iana.org/assignments/service-names-port-numbers/service-names-port-numbers.xml
MAC address
In theory the MAC addresses might help - but probably not much use unless you can find somewhere that maintains a reliable list of ranges (e.g. a network security firm, or hardware provider). MAC addresses do depend on the actual chips used (or a flashed MAC). The database is at the organisation level (although organisations sometimes choose to use specific ranges for specific devices).
http://standards.ieee.org/develop/regauth/oui/public.html allows you to download the database of "Organizationally Unique Identifiers", or you can look up "Apple", or the first three bytes of a MAC address e.g. 00264A.
Anecdotally, the MAC lookup doesn't work... First three digits of my iPad MAC are 28-68-BA and that comes up with nothing.
User agent
Probably not useful, but if you can watch the network traffic or have an http proxy, then the user-agent string could help (see http://developer.apple.com/library/IOS/documentation/AppleApplications/Reference/SafariWebContent/OptimizingforSafarioniPhone/OptimizingforSafarioniPhone.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40006517-SW3).
Edit (added):
Apple’s Bonjour protocol relies on Multicast DNS (mDNS) operating at UDP port 5353 and sends to these reserved group addresses: IPv4 Group Address - 224.0.0.251, IPv6 Group Address - FF02::FB - reference.
This would help get push notification when Apple devices connect to a local network (link-local) by listening for multicast messages on 5353 UDP. Perhaps sniff the packet and see if it has any extra information in it :)
Although I presume that Bonjour API also allows for seeing this...
You can also use the airport utility to do this manually :
1) open AirportUtility
2) Go to "Wireless Clients" (hover mouse by the arrow and click it)
3) Go to DHCP Clients, and you will see iPad,iPhone, computer name, etc.... as the Client ID column.

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