NOTE: This project has evolved into Wifi Data Safari. Check out the most up-to-date version there!
"A must-have hobby kit for any amateur network data collection."
E-mails, instant messages, videos, photos, voice chats, social network profile details ¹ and other file transfers are floating all around us everyday in the form of network datagrams ². While most of us have little appreciation for this, some of us are born with the irresistible urge ³ to capture all this data! If this is you, there’s a chance you haven’t started a personal collection of network data because of the fancy equipment ⁴ required or the expense of storing ⁵ it all. Fear not! Introducing Probe Kit™, designed for amateur and hobby network data collectors interested in getting started. No need to make secret deals ⁶ with large Internet companies, with our kit you can start your own network data collection from the comfort of your own desktop! Probe Kit™ is an all-in-one starter kit for collecting probe requests, one of the fluttering data packets from wireless devices out in the wild.
Note (August, 2017): This project is no longer mainatined. We are hoping to do a significant overhaul/rewrite in the coming months, but for the moment, treat this software as increadibly unstable. I haven't run the code in years, and while some folks have recently been able to get up and running with it on linux only, your mileage may vary. We appreciate your interest, but we cannot provide support at this time. Here be dragons.
The latest version of Probe Kit can be downloaded from the project website or from this GitHub releases page. Once you've downloaded Probe Kit, pick an install method that works best for you (see below).
Currently Probe Kit is supported on OS X and Linux only.
Open your Terminal application (Terminal.app for OS X) and navigate to your downloaded folder. If you've never used the Terminal before, don't worry! Type cd path/to/your/downloaded/folder (using your downloaded folder of course) and then press return.
Next run the install script with:
sudo ./install.sh
At which point you will be prompted to enter your password. You probably won't see your password being entered as you type (this is a security feature), but don't worry it is listening for your keypresses. While the install script is running you will be prompted to answer a few questions. For the easy install, type y and press return to continue. A few other windows might pop-up asking for you to enter your password again or to confirm an installation process.
Once the installation is complete you should see:
[install.sh] Probe Kit was installed successfully! You may now open Probe Kit.
If this is not printed to the screen or there was a problem with the install you can submit an issue and we will do all that we can to answer your questions and help with the install process. If the install script failed you may have better luck with the manual install.
If everything was successful you are now ready to move on to the Getting Started section.
To install Probe Kit manually, you must first install MongoDB and Wireshark yourself. Both of their websites should have the necessary instructions for doing so. Once Wireshark is installed you must setup your capture privileges with:
sudo ./shell/setup_capture_privileges.sh
Now run
sudo ./shell/generate_settings.sh
to create a .probekit folder in your $HOME directory. Finally, if you want to download the geotagged wifi network data and map packs for Miami, FL (more cities coming soon!), run:
sudo ./shell/custom_hooks/hook_install_done.sh
For you brave souls out there...
git clone https://github.com/brannondorsey/ProbeKit.git
cd ProbeKit/node
npm install
sudo npm install -g nw
sudo npm install -g node-webkit-builder
cd ../shell
sudo ./build.sh osx64 #comma-seperated list of build platforms, see node-webkit-builder docs
cd "../build/Probe Kit/osx64/"
sudo ./install.sh
open "Probe Kit.app" # OS X onlyProbe Kit is built and maintained by Nick Briz and Brannon Dorsey with support from Branger_Briz.
All original Probe Kit code is released under an [LICENSE](MIT License) and may be used, copied, modified, published, distributed, sublicensed, and/or sold freely.
Probe Kit is built using the following libraries and projects: