API changes

Over time, the Kismet endpoint API will change - while efforts are made to retain compatibility whenever possible, some changes will require breaking older implementations. These significant changes will be documented here.

Git

  • Added crypt_bitfield fields for modern Wi-Fi encryption options. Added crypt_string for printable versions of the crypt bitfield. Older crypset options remain, but are deprecated, and can not accurated represent the full modern encryption options.

  • Added common string cache for crypt string and Wi-Fi SSIDs, invisible to the API consumption but optimizing in the background.

  • Expanded the system status API to included additional string cache records.

2023-07-R1

  • Changed to JWT internally for generating session tokens

2022-01-R3

Changes to the REST API:

2022-01-R2

Changes to the REST API:

2022-01-R1

Changes to the REST API:

Changes to the kismetdb database:

Changes to pcapng logging:

  • Added pcapng style CRC32 hashes and packet identifier numbers for multi-interface captures

Changes to ipc/remote:

  • Added v2 ipc protocol to optimize for fast construction / zero memcpy

2021-05-R1

Changes to the REST API:

2020-12-R1

This version introduces a complete rewrite of the internal webserver implementation, changing the core webserver library to Boost::Beast and rewriting how endpoints are processed and parsed.

Changes to the REST API:

  • 802.11 handshake pcaps are now found on /phy/phy80211/by-key/[key]/pcap/handshake.pcap and /phy/phy80211/by-key/[key]/pcap/handshake-pmkid.pcap. The original MAC-based filenames are passed with the attachment; filename=... header.
  • Per-uuid pcapng streams are now found at /datasource/pcap/by-uuid/[uuid]/packets.pcapng
  • Per-device pcapng streams are now found at /devices/pcap/by-key/[key]/packets.pcapng
  • Phy80211 per-bssid pcap streams are now found at /phy/phy80211/pcap/by-bssid/[mac]/packets.pcapng
  • All REST endpoints in the API now use cmd as the file extension for all commands, deprecating and removing the jcmd extension fully (which has not been a documented command extension for several releases already).
  • Websockets are now implemented in the Kismet webserver, with the Eventbus websocket being the largest user.
  • wget is now supported by detection of the user-agent field; a full HTTP 401 and WWW-Authenticate header is sent to accommodate wget not sending basic-auth until it fails an auth check.
  • HTTP GET variables are now properly supported
  • API keys and roles are now supported
  • JSON data accepted as application/json as well as application/x-form-urlencoded
  • Authentication may be passed as user, password, or KISMET GET URL variables

New endpoints:

  • Realtime message, alert, GPS, system status, and more via the eventbus websocket at /eventbus/events.ws
  • API auth token manipulation endpoints on /auth/apikey/generate.cmd, /auth/apikey/revoke.cmd, and /auth/apikey/list.json.
  • Runtime changing of the devicefound/deviceleft alert list via /devices/alerts/mac/[type]/add.cmd, /devices/alerts/mac/[type]/remove.cmd and /devices/alerts/mac/[type]/macs.json
  • Live ADSB data in text/hex mode via ws://.../phy/RTLADSB/raw.ws, streams a text-based hex output of the ADSB data
  • Live ADSB data in binary/beast mode via ws://.../phy/RTLADSB/beast.ws, streams a binary beast-protocol ADSB dump
  • Subscription-style live device monitoring websocket endpoint at ws://.../devices/monitor.ws

Changes to data:

  • Locational data no longer includes the avg_lat, avg_lon, or avg_alt and related fields that held the raw averages of location. The average location is still present in average location object, this removal affects only the internal raw values which were exposed to serialization.
  • Locational data no longer includes the kismet.common.location.valid field, as it was redundant - this data is contained in kismet.common.location.fix when the fix is >= 2.
  • Location data no longer includes the ‘history cloud’, an attempt to provide a RRD-like history log; it used way too much RAM and was not used anywhere.
  • Some locations (such as min/max/average) no longer track speed and heading, saving more ram
  • Server UUID in device records is now a common shared field under the name kismet.server.uuid
  • Non-json command endpoints (mostly) now return text/plain
  • RRDs no longer include the aggregator string name

2020-08

To save RAM, several maps and vectors are now flagged as optional; if there is no content in those fields, they will not be present in the generated JSON. Consumers should always check for presence of the map in the returned data before trying to use it.

Fields made dynamic:

  • kismet.device.base.tags
  • dot11.device/dot11.device.client_map
  • dot11.device/dot11.device.advertised_ssid_map
  • dot11.device/dot11.device.probed_ssid_map
  • dot11.device/dot11.device.associated_client_map
  • dot11.device/dot11.device.wpa_nonce_list
  • dot11.device/dot11.device.wpa_anonce_list

To save RAM, the kismet.device.base.tags sub-map is now optional; if there are no tags in a device, this field will not exist in the serialized JSON data. Consumers of this data should check that kismet.device.base.tags is present in the device map.

2019-10

To more cleanly support ELK, all location records now use geopoint formats. A geopoint is an array containing [lon, lat]. kismet.common.location.lat and kismet.common.location.lon are now kismet.common.location.geopoint.

2019-10

To more cleanly support ELK the advertised ssid and probed ssid components of dot11 devices are now serialized as vectors instead of maps. Previously these were serialized as maps with a key of the hash of the SSID and attributes (an essentialy meaningless number in the export). Now these are sent as an array of advertised or probed SSID objects.

2019-10

To more cleanly support ELK EKJSON format, the ekjson serialization now permutes the field names to transform all . to _. This brings it in line with the ELK interpretation that a . is a field separator. To access the old implemention, where the field names are unmodified, use the new itjson (or ‘iterative json’) format; it will return results which are a vector of objects as an object per line, suitable for serialized parsing and processing.

2019-04

Kismet now requires authentication on ALL endpoints, with the exclusion of /system/user_status, /session/check_login, /session/check_session, and /session/check_setup_ok.