Basic Mana Karma Options

Basic Mana Options

Table of Contents

• KARMA / MANA
• Logging Device Activity

This assumes a basic understanding of hostapd.conf files. If you don’t have that, please read simplest hostapd.conf.

By default, hostapd-mana will act like vanilla hostapd as much as possible. Here, we’ll look at how to enable mana (aka karma) attacks. You can read about the theory behind them here.

KARMA / MANA

Simple adding the following line to your hostapd.conf will enable mana’s per-device mode where each network is rebroadcast only to the device probing for it:

enable_mana=1

If you would like to enable loud mode, where all networks are advertised to all devices, then add:

mana_loud=1

Thus, a simple config with mana enabled in loud mode could look like:

interface=wlan0
ssid=hostapd-mana wifi
channel=6
hw_mode=g
enable_mana=1
mana_loud=1

Logging Device Activity

Typically, there are many devices nearby, and many probe requests flying back and forth. These can be logged to a file for later analysis by adding the following option:

mana_outfile=hostapd.manaout
track_sta_max_num=100
track_sta_max_age=180

This will write the data to a file called hostapd.manaout in the local directory (you can add a path, you should add a path). This file will include data in the format: <MAC>, <SSID>, <Random MAC? 1, or if not 0>, <TAXONOMY>

The other two track options are required to enable taxonomy signatures. You can leave them out, but then you’ll just get <MAC>, <SSID>, <Random?> in the outfile.