Introduction
Multiple Radios. One device.
The Hak5 WiFi Coconut is a USB device with 14 integrated 2.4GHz WiFi radios for passive sniffing of the entire 2.4GHz WiFi spectrum simultaneously.
Using the WiFi Coconut drivers (highly recommended) or addressing it as independent radios (use at your own risk), you can capture raw WiFi packets in pcap format, suitable for use with Wireshark and other packet analysis tools, or connect it to Kismet and capture directly.
DO NOT use WiFi Coconut radios to transmit — doing so may damage the device and void the Hak5 limited warranty.
Why the Coconut?
WiFi radio spectrum is divided into channels.
For 2.4GHz WiFi (IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g, and IEEE 802.11n), there are 14 channels defined world-wide. Most countries use a subset of these channels - the United States uses channels 1 through 11, while other regions like Japan may unlock channels 12, 13, and 14.
Each channel overlaps neighboring channels. How significantly they overlap depends on the quality of the radios and the distance from the transmitter.
To capture packets from a channel, you need a radio tuned to that channel. Conventional solutions capture from multiple channels by rapidly changing the channel multiple times a second, giving a view of all channels, but at the cost of missing data when tuned elsewhere.
Same software, all platforms
Leveraging the power of Open Source, the WiFi Coconut tools bring the Linux kernel drivers out of the kernel and use them to make the WiFi Coconut operate as a single device on Linux, macOS, and even Windows.
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