KisMAC

Mobile platforms, like MacBooks, can discover wireless networks automatically and you may connect to them without any effort, but you can do much more if you have a specialized discovery application. An excellent example is KisMAC. It can discover any wireless network around you, as well as hidden or cloaked SSIDs and it can provide you with a huge amount of information. What's more, the application comes with various security capabilities, to prevent attacks from these networks.

Discovered networks are listed on a compact user interface, along with many details. You can switch to other view modes, by clicking a series of buttons, in the lower region of the window, if you wish to see traffic statistics, your GPS location or other information. Once you hit a Start option, in the lower right corner of the interface, the application will scan for Wi-Fi networks immediately.

KisMAC has a clean and efficient design. There is not much to look at on the surface, but you can find many useful features under the application's hood. For example, KisMAC provides support for network deauthentication. Because wireless clients tend to accept any data as valid, they can be attacked fairly easy, but KisMAC's deauthentication feature can prevent this.

If you have a look in the application's menus, you will find many other interesting features. Options for carrying out an authentication flood, cracking encrypted networks and capturing from a Kismet drone are just a few examples.