How to find the wireless MAC address (aka BSSID) of any wireless access point

Question

I have aircrack-ng 1.2 beta 3 and I wanted to know how I can find the wireless MAC address (aka BSSID) of any wireless access point with aircrack-ng (or any other program).

I am currently running Ubuntu 14.10.

Solution

Use iw device scan to show all information about currently visible networks. The output has more than an entire screenful per network, so use grep to trim it down:

$ sudo iw wlan0 scan | egrep "^BSS|SSID:"
BSS 24:a4:3c:9e:d2:84(on wlan0) -- associated
    SSID: eduroam
BSS 24:a4:3c:ae:df:83(on wlan0)
    SSID: Example multi-AP network
BSS dc:9f:db:30:c1:7a(on wlan0)
    SSID: Example multi-AP network
BSS 00:19:3b:99:e2:80(on wlan0)
    SSID: TEO Wi-Fi

For some very old Wi-Fi card drivers, you'll need the iwlist device scan tool instead:

$ sudo iwlist wlan0 scan | egrep "Address:|ESSID:"
          Cell 01 - Address: 24:A4:3C:9E:D2:84
                    ESSID:"eduroam"
          Cell 02 - Address: 24:A4:3C:AE:DF:83
                    ESSID:"Example multi-AP network"
          Cell 03 - Address: DC:9F:DB:30:C1:7A
                    ESSID:"Example multi-AP network"
          Cell 04 - Address: 24:A4:3C:9E:D2:16
                    ESSID:"Example multi-AP network"

Aircrack also comes with the airodump-ng tool which repeatedly shows all networks it sees. (You need to enable monitor mode first, using airmon-ng.)

Comments

[Rsya Studios]

MAC address of a network?

[Xen2050]

I'm 90% sure (s)he means an access point/router's WAN MAC Address a.k.a. "wireless MAC address (also called as BSSID)" as described in en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_access_point . "Why no one no help?"

[Xen2050]

This answer looks to be the right direction to go askubuntu.com/a/351517/129271

[Xen2050]

And doesn't the default network manager show the BSSID's of available (visible) AP's, no aircrack required?

[mivk]

With Ubuntu, you can also use nmcli -f BSSID dev wifi list. See this or this answer on askubuntu.

[kprovost7314]

Isn't a BSSID the IP Address?