horst is a small, lightweight IEEE802.11 WLAN analyzer with a text interface.
Its basic function is similar to tcpdump, Wireshark or Kismet, but it’s much smaller and shows different, aggregated information which is not easily available from other tools.
It is made for debugging wireless LANs with a focus on getting a quick overview instead of deep packet inspection and has special features for Ad-hoc (IBSS) mode and mesh networks. It can be useful to get a quick overview of what’s going on all wireless LAN channels and to identify problems.
Key Features
- Shows signal (RSSI) values per station, something hard to get, especially in IBSS mode.
- Calculates channel utilization (“usage”) by adding up the amount of time the packets actually occupy the medium.
- “Spectrum Analyzer” shows signal levels and usage per channel.
- Graphical packet history, with signal, packet type and physical rate.
- Shows all stations per ESSID and the live TSF per node as it is counting.
- Detects IBSS “splits” (same ESSID but different BSSID – this is/was a common driver problem on IBSS mode).
- Statistics of packets/bytes per physical rate and per packet type.
- Has some support for mesh protocols (OLSR and batman).
- Filter specific packet types, operating modes, source addresses or BSSIDs.
- Client/server support for monitoring on remote nodes.
- Automatically adds and removes monitor interface.
Website: github.com/br101/horst
Support:
Developer: Bruno Randolf
License: GNU General Public License v2.0
horst is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Wireless Security Tools | |
|---|---|
| bettercap | Swiss Army knife for 802.11, BLE, IPv4 and IPv6 networks reconnaissance |
| airgeddon | Multi-use bash script for Linux systems to audit wireless networks |
| Fluxion | Wireless auditing framework for testing Wi-Fi network security |
| URH | Complete suite for wireless protocol investigation |
| aircrack-ng | WiFi security auditing tools suite |
| hcxtools | Tools for analysing Wi-Fi capture and hash files |
| wavemon | ncurses-based monitoring for wireless network devices |
| Kismet | 802.11 layer2 wireless network detector, sniffer, intrusion detection system |
| hcxdumptool | Capture packets from wlan devices |
| Wifite | Python script for auditing wireless networks |
| Fern Wifi Cracker | Wireless security auditing and attack software |
| WHAD | Framework for exploring, analysing and testing wireless protocols |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
 Explore our carefully curated directory of recommended free and open source software, covering every major software category.The directory forms part of our extensive collection of articles for Linux enthusiasts. It includes hundreds of detailed reviews, together with free and open source alternatives to proprietary software from companies such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. LinuxLinks also covers interesting projects worth exploring, Linux-compatible hardware, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Know a useful free and open source Linux application that we haven’t covered? Tell us about it using our submission form. |
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.