I wrote this thing as a gimmick for a conference to show how much information some mobile devices leak over wifi. People asked for the source code, so here it is. Enjoy!

warning: there are vulns!

What is it?

It's a tool that shows you (real time) which wifi clients that are nearby, and which network they are searching for (probe requests). It shows you something like this:

[strength] [mac]        [oui]         [seen]
-53 aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff   Manufacturer  5s ago
  (Probe request) -53   seen 6s ago:  NETGEAR71
  (Probe request) -53   seen 6s ago:  Starbucks
  (Probe request) -53   seen 6s ago:  eduroam
  (Probe request) -53   seen 6s ago:  Tivoli Hotel & Congress Center
  (Probe request) -53   seen 6s ago:  FREEWIFI_OLEARYS
  (Probe request) -53   seen 6s ago:  hideyokidshideyowifi

In this example above, it shows us that the wifi device with mac address aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff was "heard" 5 seconds ago, and it has in the past searched for a list of wifi network names, as shown in the list. These wifi network names can subsequently be used with e.g. wigle.net.

Usage

1. Plug in as many wifi dongles as you can. The scripts do not channel hop, but instead prioritizes popular channels. Due to channel overlap, 5 interfaces should cover the entire 2.4GHz band.
2. Run ./maclogger.py
3. Open new terminal, cd to vicinity/
4. Run watch -n 1 --color ./vicinity.py

PRs are welcome!