Revision history [back]

For reviewing networks around you to see what security they use, I would suggest kismet or bettercap on Linux.

Other OSs have other can tools that can do similar things.

To pick some of this information out of a packet capture, look at the Beacons (wlan.fc.type_subtype == 0x08) and find the RSN information element, if it exists. This will indicate, for WPA networks, the security settings:

There are various settings for these values that indicate the different types of security, like WPA2-Personal, or WPA2-Enterprise, WPA or WPA3, etc. The picture is an example of WPA2-Personal. If it were for WPA2-Enterprise, key management (AKM) would be WPA. There are many combinations.

For reviewing networks around you to see what security they use, I would suggest kismet or bettercap on Linux.

Other OSs have other can tools that can do similar things.

To pick some of this information out of a packet capture, look at the Beacons (wlan.fc.type_subtype == 0x08) and find the RSN information element, if it exists. This will indicate, for WPA networks, the security settings:

There are various settings for these values that indicate the different types of security, like WPA2-Personal, or WPA2-Enterprise, WPA or WPA3, etc. The picture is an example of WPA2-Personal. If it were for WPA2-Enterprise, key management (AKM) would be WPA. There are many combinations.