International charset not recognized by airodump-ng

[joh1686]

Hi guys,

I am using aircrack-ng 1.2-rc3 on Ubuntu Linux 16.04.
I noticed that when using airodump-ng it displays international charsets as bad/unknown characters (BF/EF/BD).

For example:
CH 2 ][ Elapsed: 6 s ][ 2017-02-27 10:00

BSSID PWR Beacons #Data, #/s CH MB ENC CIPHER AUTH ESSID

8C:3A:E3:3F:DA:56 -28 8 3 1 11 54e WPA2 CCMP PSK �.�.�.�.?
B4:C7:99:59:E7:23 -32 10 0 0 1 54 . WPA2 CCMP PSK <length: 1>
B4:C7:99:59:E7:22 -34 9 0 0 1 54 . WPA2 CCMP PSK <length: 1>

It's supposed to be מההה? in Hebrew.
I did not find a solution in google or anyone mentioning this issue.

[Mister-X-]

Is your terminal able to display hebrew? https://askubuntu.com/questions/458856/hebrew-font-in-terminal-ubuntu-12-10

[joh1686]

Yes it can display hebrew:
$ cat name.txt
�.�.�.�.?
מהההה?
The first line is the one I copied from aircrack and the second one is one I wrote myself using vi.
And in Hex:
$ hexdump name.txt
0000000 bfef 2ebd bfef 2ebd bfef 2ebd bfef 2ebd
0000010 0a3f 9ed7 94d7 94d7 94d7 94d7 0a3f
000001e

When logged in to wifi network מההה? I see via iwconfig
wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:"\xD7\x9E\xD7\x94\xD7\x94\xD7\x94?"

I also tried some symbols that are not hebrew (Indian Rupee sign ₹):
8C:3A:E3:3F:DA:56 -33 25 0 0 11 54e WPA2 CCMP PSK �.��.��.��.�¤¤¤
The 3 right squareish symbols are correct but the rest are displayed as bad chars.
Via iwconfig I can see:
wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:"\xE2\x82\xB9\xE2\x82\xB9\xE2\x82\xB9\xE2\x82\xB9\xC2\xA4\xC2\xA4\xC2\xA4"

[GnaixLin]

essid char is limit:

1. i f( ( ap_cur->essid[i] > 0 && ap_cur->essid[i] < 32 ) ||( ap_cur->essid[i] > 126 && ap_cur->essid[i] < 160 ) )
   ap_cur->essid[i] = '.';

2. if( c == 0 || ( c > 126 && c < 160 ) ) c = '.'; //could also check ||(c>0 && c<32)

[joh1686]

@GnaixLin Thanks. This explains why the \x9e and \x94 are turned into a dot char, but not the \xd7 char.
Looks like airodump treats chars as one byte while UTF-8 is usually multi-byte.

[Mister-X-]

Apparently, the standard allows UTF-8 but it is a special case. Would it be possible to have a PCAP file with just a beacon, a probe request+response and association request?

"When the UTF-8 SSID subfield of the Extended Capabilities element is equal to 1 in the frame that includes
the SSID element, the SSID is interpreted using UTF-8 encoding."

[joh1686]

I captured a beacon frame. I hope you don't mind I edited the bssid.
https://ufile.io/b0d141

[Mister-X-]

Yep, that's OK.

Thanks

[Mister-X-]

That AP doesn't seem to follow the spec when it comes to UTF8.

It's a complex issue, it affects a lot of tools, not only airodump-ng, anything where you specify an ESSID or processes SSID. It affects airodump-ng in several ways: displaying and saving to files (and also the different file formats that might handle it in a different way). It's gonna take some time to fix it.

[joh1686]

It's an LG D802 but not the first time they don't follow spec.
It looks like Ubuntu's net manager is able to correctly display the essid.
Thanks for the prompt response.

[samiux]

I also encountered this problem when the SSID is not in English.

Will this be fixed?