Airplane tracking for Linux Penguins

We had shared articles on tracking airplanes with SDR on windows. Here is how you do it on Linux. We will be using Kali Linux in our example but you can do it on any other distribution as well. The number of dependencies required may vary from distribution to distribution.
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How to?

1) Before we start with the actual script you might need a couple of dependencies which means you might have to do a couple of apt-gets:-  
apt-get install libusb-1.0-0-dev

apt-get install libusb-dev

apt-get install librtlsdr-dev

2) After you are done you might need to get dump1090 from GitHub:-

git clone https://github.com/antirez/dump1090.git

3) Now you will have to cd into the folder and recompile the script:-

cd dump1090

make

4)Now to run it use the command:-

./dump1090 --interactive

Note:-

To explore more options you can the command ./dump1090 --help. The best thing is that the script is open source so you can modify it as per your desires.

 

 

Sniffing for GSM packets

GSM network works on a frequency 850-900 MHz. In other words we can sniff the packet transfer between the phone and a GSM tower with an rtl-sdr dongle.

How to?
At first you might have to get the dependences:

• apt-get –y install git-core autoconf automake libtool g++ python-dev swig libpcap0.8-dev
• apt-get install gnuradio gnuradio-dev cmake git libboost-all-dev libusb-1.0-0 libusb-1.0-0-dev libfftw3-dev swig python-numpy libpcsclite-dev 

Now you will need to get libosmocore:

• git clone git://git.osmocom.org/libosmocore.git
• cd libosmocore
• autoreconf –i
• ./configure
• make
• make install
• ldconfig
• cd ..

Now you will need airprobe:

• git clone https://github.com/ksnieck/airprobe.git

At the end you might have to install the gsmdecoder:

• cd airprobe/gsmdecode
• ./bootstrap 
• ./configure
• make
• cd ..

At last you might have to install the receiver:

• cd airprobe/gsm-receiver
• ./bootstrap
• ./configure
• make

Now to start the sniffing:

• python gsm_receive_rtl.py -s 1e6

Now open wireshark and set the interface to lo(loopback). And set the filter to gsmtap so that you only get the gsm packets.

Note:- 

If you don't get packets change the frequency with the gnu radio GUI. If you want to know more you can refer to this article. You might have to add a few more dependencies if you are using other distributions of Linux.