When I switched back to OpenBSD as my primary daily-use operating system back in 2011, my biggest complaint was the lack of an easy-to-use tool for managing wireless networks. I only used maybe two or three different wireless networks daily. I just used a few shell scripts that statically configured the network card for each of these environments. Any time I'd go somewhere else, though, it would be a pain to manually configure it.
Almost exactly five years ago, I did something about it, and I called it wiconn.sh. Since I already had one-off scripts for my home and office networks, Wiconn started as a script to display open networks. It would display only the open ones, and prompt me for an SSID, and it could remember the BSSID (MAC Addresses) of open networks I used to protect me from things like my own Evil WiFi setup and other "evil twin" style wireless attacks.
That first version looked something like this:
Wiconn evolved over time. By late 2012, I'd given it a bunch of features and made the interface look nicer. All SSIDs were being listed with color-coded backgrounds for the network you're connected to, and open networks. Visually, it hasn't changed much since 2012. This is how Wiconn looks today:
Over this long holiday weekend, I finally got it to a place where I feel like sharing it. Since it's already in the garage for maintenance, I figured I might as well put wiconn on GitHub.
Features:
- Written primarily in Bourne shell (/bin/sh)
- No dependencies: Relies only on the OpenBSD base distribution
- Built-in protection from common wireless attacks
- Easily connect to saved networks with one command (no scanning or prompt)
- 2-Clause Simplified BSD license
Anyhow, for the growing number of folks who are giving OpenBSD a shot lately, I thought I'd share. Feedback is welcome, and more information is available through the documentation via GitHub.
n0xa/wiconn on GitHub
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