The RDSOS grade will be determined based on the implementation of a project and a written exam.
The final grade is computed as follows:
Final Grade = 50% Project + 50% Written Exam
The written exam will take place at the end of the semester and will cover the material taught during the lectures.
The project topic is: development of a WiFi Analyzer and a network packet sniffer for a wireless
network interface (for either a desktop or mobile system).
The following project functionalities must be implemented:
- 1. The WiFi Analyzer must provide a graphical interface similar to that of
Android WiFi Analyzer.
This means that: graphical icons must be displayed for each detected network, with their colors
reflecting the signal strength (green, yellow, red); a graph must show how congested the 13 WiFi
channels are, similar to the channel graph displayed in Android WiFi Analyzer. The following
data must be displayed for each detected wireless network: SSID (network name), Access Point MAC address,
manufacturer, signal strength, channel in use, frequency in use, network security/encryption characteristics.
To capture all this data, the wireless network interface must first be switched to "Monitor" mode, rather
than "Managed" mode, and must not be connected to a wireless network.
- 2. Network Packet Sniffer providing functionality similar to TCPdump or
WireShark, but with a limited set of features.
It must capture packets from the wireless network interface and display the following information:
IEEE 802.11 header (source and destination MAC addresses), IP header (source and destination IP addresses
and the remaining header fields), TCP header (source and destination ports and the remaining header fields).
If the packet is an HTTP packet (i.e., the destination port is 80), its ASCII payload must also be displayed.
The packet sniffer must operate in both "Monitor" mode and "Managed" mode of the wireless network interface.
Naturally, implementing this project requires calling various operating system functions or using software
library wrappers around these functions. However, the purpose of the project is to ensure that the functions
being called perform only minimal operations. For example, packet capture can be implemented using the
libpcap library, but you must manually parse the packet headers.
This means manually parsing the byte stream containing the raw packet and splitting it into headers and
the individual fields within each header. The project grade will be proportional to the number of features
implemented from the list above and to the extent to which you implement functionality manually,
without relying on external library functions.
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3. Observation: For the WiFi Analyzer application, it is important to
switch the wireless network interface to "Monitor" mode in order to capture management packets containing a Radiotap header.
This is relatively easy to do on Linux, but not as straightforward on Windows or macOS (as far as I know).
Of course, you may also implement the application on Android, similarly to Android WiFi Analyzer,
if you wish (obviously, without copying its code). If you do not have Linux, do not want to install
Linux in a dual-boot configuration or in a virtual machine, and cannot switch your Wi-Fi adapter to "Monitor" mode,
you may implement the WiFi Analyzer (Project 1) using a library/API (e.g., the Microsoft Windows Native
WiFi API ), without manually parsing the management packets.
However, in this case (i.e., if you do not manually parse the management packets and do not switch
the interface to "Monitor" mode), you must implement a third project to obtain the maximum grade:
a Wi-Fi network auditing and analysis tool. Even when the Wi-Fi interface is operating in "Managed" mode,
this tool must display the following information:
- TCP and UDP connections, identified by the 4-tuple [Source IP Address:Source Port - Destination IP Address:Destination Port]
- real-time traffic rate in bits per second for each TCP/UDP connection; this information
must be displayed graphically, not just as text
- the application using each TCP/UDP connection (e.g., Google Chrome, Acrobat Reader, Microsoft Teams, etc.)
- details about the destination IP address and destination port, including: the DNS name associated
with the IP address, the port type (HTTP, SSH, FTP, etc.), IP geolocation information (country and city)
This tool must display the requested information in real time and update it continuously in real time.
Implementing Project 3 above does not mean that Project 1 (WiFi Analyzer) no longer needs to be implemented.
As an alternative to the project, you may write a 4-page report and prepare a presentation based on one
of the papers available
here (your choice). However, this alternative comes
with a penalty of 4 points, meaning that the maximum project grade will be 6.
Click here
to schedule your project presentation.
Projects may also be submitted during the examination session, but a penalty of 4 points will be applied.
Presentation schedules are displayed in the table below: