Which tool is used to detect wireless LANs using the 802.11 standards on a Linux platform?

• A. Traceroute
• B. Nessus
• C. EtherApe
• D. Kismet

Answer: (D)

Detecting wireless LANs on Linux hinges on listening to 802.11 frames in monitor mode. Kismet is built exactly for this purpose: it’s a wireless network detector, sniffer, and IDS for 802.11 networks on Linux. By putting a compatible wireless card into monitor mode, it passively captures beacon frames, probe requests/responses, and other 802.11 frames across channels, letting you discover access points, client devices, SSIDs, and security types even when networks aren’t actively advertising. It can hop channels to map the airspace and identify network topologies. The other tools aren’t meant for wireless discovery—traceroute finds routes, Nessus is a vulnerability scanner, and EtherApe is a network visualization tool—so they don’t serve this WLAN-detection purpose.