Linux Journal June 2014 by Linux Journal

Author:Linux Journal
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Scapy, Network Security, mobile, Sickbeard, GPG, 2048, Berkeley Packet Filters, Python, Ansible, RHEL, Mutt, Linux, Android, OSSIM, Wireshark
Publisher: Belltown Media
Published: 2014-05-28T07:00:00+00:00

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FEATURES

Monitoring Android Traffic with Wireshark

Use some simple Linux tools and a laptop to get access to the Internet traffic sent and received by your smartphone.

BRIAN TRAPP

The ubiquity and convenience of smartphones has been a real boon for getting information on the go. I love being able to jump on a Wi-Fi hotspot, catch up on my mail, check my banking balance or read the latest tech news—all without having to bring along or boot up a laptop. Now that mobile development is mainstream, most of this access is done via specialized apps, instead of via a Web browser.

This migration away from direct Web access in favor of dedicated smartphone apps has made for a richer user experience, but it also has made knowing exactly what is going on “under the hood” a lot harder. On our Linux boxes, there are many tools to help user peer into the internals of what’s going to and from the machine. Our browsers have simple HTTP versus HTTPS checks to see if there’s encryption, and there are simple but easy-to-use browser plugins like Firebug that let us view exactly what’s being sent and retrieved over the Web. At the operating system level, powerful tools like Wireshark let us drill down even further, capturing all traffic flowing through a network interface. Smartphones usually are locked up to a point where it’s almost impossible for a regular user to run any network monitoring or tracing software directly on the phone—so how can a curious user get access to that phone traffic?

Fortunately, with just a little bit of work, you can use Linux to transform almost any laptop into a secret-sharing wireless access point (WAP), connect your phone and view the data flowing to and from the phone with relative ease. All you really need is a laptop running Linux with one wireless and one Ethernet connection.

Intercepting Traffic

The first step is to set up your own “naughty” WAP where you can capture and log all the Internet traffic passing through it—simulating the kind of information that a rogue employee could be obtaining from a coffee-shop Wi-Fi hotspot. Let’s do this in a distribution-independent way that doesn’t mess around with your existing router (no need to change security settings) and doesn’t require rooting or installing anything unseemly on your phone.

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