Alerts

Kismet alerts notify the user of critical Kismet events and wireless intrusion events. Alerts are generated as messages (sent via the messagebus) and as alert records.

Alert configuration

Kismet exposes the full alert system configuration, including currently supported alert types, full descriptions of alert content, and time and burst-rate delivery limiting.

  • URL
    /alerts/definitions.json

  • Methods
    GET

  • Result
    Array of all alert records.

All alerts

Kismet retains the past N alerts, as defined in kismet_alert.conf. By default, Kismet retains 50 alert records.

  • URL
    /alerts/all_alerts.json

  • Methods
    GET

  • Result
    Array of all currently stored alerts

Recent alerts

Alerts can be fetched by timestamp, returning only new alerts. This API takes a specialized timestamp value which includes microsecond precision.

This endpoint returns the exact timestamp, with microsecond precision, of the returned alerts; this allows a client UI to accurately display only the new alerts.

  • URL
    /alerts/last-time/[TIMESTAMP.UTIMESTAMP]/alerts.json

  • Methods
    GET

  • URL parameters

Key Description
[TIMESTAMP.UTIMESTAMP] A double-precision timestamp of the Unix epochal second timestamp and a microsecond precision sub-second timestamp.
  • Result
    A dictionary containing an array of alerts since TIMESTAMP.UTIMESTAMP and a double-precision timestamp second and microsecond timestamp of the current server time.

Defining alerts

New alerts can be defined runtime, and triggered by external tools via the REST API.

  • URL
    /alerts/definitions/define_alert.cmd

  • Methods
    POST

  • POST parameters
    A command dictionary containing:

Key Description
name Simple alert name/identifier
description Alert explanation / definition displayed to the user
phyname (Optional) name of phy this alert is associated with. If not provided, alert will apply to all phy types. If provided, the defined phy must be found or the alert will not be defined.
throttle Maximum number of alerts per time period, as defined in kismet.conf. Time period may be ‘sec’, ‘min’, ‘hour’, or ‘day’, for example ‘10/min’
burst Maximum number of sequential alerts per time period, as defined in kismet.conf. Time period may be ‘sec’, ‘min’, ‘hour’, or ‘day’. Alerts will be throttled to this burst rate even when the overall limit has not been hit. For example, ‘1/sec’
  • Results
    HTTP 200 on success
    HTTP error on failure

Raising alerts

Alerts can be triggered by external tools; the alert must be defined, first.

  • URL
    /alerts/raise_alerts.cmd

  • Methods
    POST

  • POST parameters
    A command dictionary containing:

Key Description
name Alert name/identifier. Must be a defined alert name.
text Human-readable text for alert
bssid (optional) MAC address of the BSSID, if Wi-Fi, related to this alert
source (optional) MAC address the source device which triggered this alert
dest (optional) MAC address of the destination device which triggered this alert
other (optional) Related other MAC address of the event which triggered this alert
channel (optional) Phy-specific channel definition of the event which triggered this alert
  • Result
    HTTP 200 on success
    HTTP error on failure

Updated: