Wireless/OSX

This page contains handy instructions for doing things with wireless cards on the Mac.

Hold Down the Option Key

Hold down the option key when you click the wireless icon in the top right. You'll see a secret menu with goodies like your MAC address, wireless network interface name, and a wireless diagnostics menu item.

Airport utility

Start by creating a symlink to the airport utility, a hidden utility that comes with the Mac, somewhere on your path:

sudo ln -fs /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport /usr/local/bin/airport

Now you can use the airport utility as a stand-in for the usual Linux networking utilities.

https://www.itdojo.com/osx-airport-cli-tool-not-just-for-airport-aps/

$ airport -I

(that's a capital i flag, as in Information) will print out information about your current wireless card, your mac address, your data rates, your encryption, your access point and its signal strength, etc.

Sniff a channel

The syntax for sniffing a channel on a wireless interface is as follows.

Start by finding you wireless interface name with ifconfig. The built-in wireless is probably en1. The syntax is:

sudo airport [interface] -c [channel]