// the find
risinek/esp32-wifi-penetration-tool
Exploring possibilities of ESP32 platform to attack on nearby Wi-Fi networks.
A firmware project for ESP32 that turns a $10 microcontroller into a portable Wi-Fi auditing device capable of capturing WPA2 handshakes, PMKIDs, and sending deauth frames. Aimed at security researchers and students who want to understand 802.11 attack mechanics without buying dedicated hardware like a Flipper or a Pineapple.
The component architecture is clean for an ESP-IDF project — frame_analyzer, pcap_serializer, and wsl_bypasser are genuinely reusable pieces, not just spaghetti in main.c. The WSL bypasser to inject arbitrary 802.11 frames is the technically interesting bit; Espressif's stack normally blocks this. Outputs PCAP and HCCAPX directly, so captures drop straight into Wireshark or Hashcat without conversion. Prebuilt binaries are included, which is a rare and practical touch for a hardware project.
Pinned to ESP-IDF 4.1 from 2020 and the README explicitly warns it may break on newer versions — ESP-IDF is on 5.x now, so building from source is a gamble unless you track down that exact commit. Last meaningful commit was 2024 but the IDF version never moved, which means it's drifting toward unbuildable. The web UI has no authentication and no SSL by design, so anyone on the management AP can control the tool — fine for a lab, a problem in the field. No support for WPA3, which is increasingly common and would require a different attack surface entirely.