Find wifi enabled devices [stations] around

Question

Imagine this situation that there are some smartphones and computer around with their WiFi adapter (wireless adapters) on, but not necessary connected to a network.

Is there a way to look the MAC addresses via a Linux machine?

Any insights are appreciated.

Answer 1

Disconnected clients aren't always silent. In fact, more often than not, clients send out directed and broadcast probe requests searching for access points they have connected to previously, thus revealing their MAC addresses which can be displayed through airodump-ng or by filtering capture packets in Wireshark to display probe requests. This is the suitable Wireshark filter:

wlan.fc.type_subtype eq 4

Answer 2

Old question, but i'll have a go anyway.

Wifi enabled devices usually send probe requests to try to find Access points they previously have been connected to, even when they are nowhere near them.

If you're using backtrack/kali linux, try this:

Create a wireless adapter alias running in monitor mode (assuming your adapter name is wlan0):

airmon-ng start wlan0

Start scanning for devices and access points:

airodump-ng mon0

The access points will be listed first with their Mac addresses under "BSSID", followed by the devices which will have their MAC addresses listed under "STATION" and a "not associated" flag under "BSSID" if they aren't connected to an access point.