Book Image

Raspberry Pi for Secret Agents - Third Edition

Book Image

Raspberry Pi for Secret Agents - Third Edition

Overview of this book

This book is for all mischievous Raspberry Pi owners who’d like to see their computer transform into a neat spy gadget to be used in a series of practical pranks and projects. No previous skills are required to follow along, and if you’re completely new to Linux, you’ll pick up much of the basics for free. We’ll help you set up your Raspberry Pi Zero, Raspberry Pi 2 and Raspberry Pi 3 and guide you through a number of pranks and secret agent techniques that are so inconspicuous yet high on mischief. You’ll learn how to configure your operating system for maximum mischief and start exploring audio, video, or Wi-Fi techniques. We’ll show you how to record, listen, or talk to people from a distance and how to set up your own phone network. Then, you’ll plug in your webcam and set up a motion detector with an alarm and find out what the other computers on your Wi-Fi network are up to. Once you’ve mastered the techniques, we’ll combine them with a battery pack and GPS for the ultimate off-road spy kit.
Table of Contents (7 chapters)

Getting an overview of all the computers on your network


When analyzing Wi-Fi networks in particular, we have to take the borderless nature of radio signals into account. For example, someone could be parked in a car outside your house, running a rogue access point, and tricking the computers inside your home to send all their traffic through this nefarious surveillance equipment. To be able to detect such attacks, you need a way of monitoring the airspace around your house.

Monitoring Wi-Fi airspace with Kismet

Kismet is a Wi-Fi spectrum and traffic analyzer that relies on your Wi-Fi adapter's ability to enter something called monitor mode. You should be aware that not all adapters and drivers support this mode of operation, but those based on the Atheros or Ralink chipset are a good bet.

You can test whether your Wi-Fi adapter supports monitor mode; attempt to put it into this mode with the following commands:

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo ifconfig wlan0 down
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo iwconfig wlan0...