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hostapd-mana

2.12 open-source

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Wireless & RF

Exploitation & C2

Reconnaissance & OSINT

Reverse Engineering

hostapd-mana is a featureful rogue access point that captures EAP credentials, WPA2 handshakes, and responds to probe requests using KARMA/MANA mode.

source ↗ website ↗ rss ↗ What is a cyber toolchain? last repo push Aug 16, 2026

Summary

hostapd-mana is an open-source fork of hostapd that turns a wireless card into a rogue access point for evil-twin and credential-capture attacks, released under a BSD licence at no cost. It runs as a background daemon on Linux, built from source per subdirectory like standard hostapd, and is aimed at penetration testers and red teamers assessing WiFi authentication rather than at network administrators. It sits in the same wireless-security space as tools like Wifiphisher and Hostapd-WPE, adding karma-style probe-response spoofing and interception across all 16 EAP modes, including on 802.11be (Wi-Fi 7) 6 GHz networks. Development traces back to 2014 with 15 contributors and seven tracked releases, though there have been no commits in the past year, so treat it as stable but no longer actively maintained.

hostapd-mana is a featureful rogue access point that captures EAP credentials, WPA2 handshakes, and responds to probe requests using KARMA/MANA mode.

How hostapd-mana helps

Which nearby devices will try to authenticate to a network that does not exist yet?

broadcasts karma-style probe responses that claim to be whatever SSID a client is searching for, drawing probing devices to associate with it instead of their intended network

Can a captured client be pushed through full EAP authentication so its credentials or hashes get logged?

impersonates the authentication server across all 16 EAP modes, completing enough of the handshake to record the credential material the client sends, without needing to know the real network's secret

Will a Wi-Fi 7 client on a 6 GHz network fall for the same rogue AP as older hardware?

operates the impersonation and credential-capture path over 802.11be 6 GHz radios, so newer client hardware is exposed to the same evil-twin technique as legacy clients

Is the wireless authentication test still working the same way it did on the last engagement?

runs as the same background daemon built from source per subdirectory each time, so a rogue AP set up today behaves like one from a prior assessment, though with no commits in the past year new client behaviour is not being patched for

What did a given interception attempt actually capture from a target device?

logs the EAP exchange and any credential material the client handed over during association, giving the tester the record to review after the session ends

all 8 features, with the evidence for each →

Languages

Not documented

Features

8 capabilities · 5 backed by code, an API document or a real run

Built from hostapd-mana's releases, docs, README and our own runs. “Seen” marks the month we first spotted a release the vendor didn't date. Group names and tags are our labels.

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What hostapd-mana offers you

  • Command-line interface1
All capabilities 8 capabilities
EAP credential interception shipped Maintains EAP mode interceptions for credential capture on 802.11be 6 GHz networks. 3 releases · first seen Jan 2019

release

  • Retains full interception coverage across all 16 EAP modes on 802.11be 6 GHz networks. image 2.12 · Aug 2026 · source · release history
  • Maintains all 16 EAP mode interceptions (credential capture and credential-material capture) on 802.11be 6 GHz networks. 2.12 · Aug 2026 · source · release history
  • Adds ability to capture WPA/2 handshakes from stations attempting to associate to a WPA/2 network directly to hashcat's hccapx format. 2.6.5 · Jan 2019 · source · release history
Status tracking files verified Generates dedicated files for summary and success status updates. 2 other sources · first seen Aug 2026

command line

Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be) support shipped Supports 802.11be (Wi-Fi 7) and 6 GHz band operation for testing against modern clients. 2 releases · first seen Aug 2026

release

  • Supports 802.11be (Wi-Fi 7) and 6 GHz band operation, enabling rogue AP and credential-intercept testing against modern 802.11be clients. image 2.12 · Aug 2026 · source · release history
  • Supports 802.11be (Wi-Fi 7) and 6 GHz networks for rogue AP operations, enabling EAP credential interception on next-generation wireless infrastructure. 2.12 · Aug 2026 · source · release history
Build directory configuration verified Allows specification of directories to search during build. 1 other source · first seen Aug 2026

command line

CLI quiet mode verified Provides a flag to suppress standard output. 1 other source · first seen Aug 2026

command line

Command execution verified Supports direct command execution via CLI. 1 other source · first seen Aug 2026

Also counts toward: Command-line interface

command line

Custom output file generation verified Allows specifying a custom file path for output data. 1 other source · first seen Aug 2026

command line

Wireless infrastructure components documented Suite containing wpa_supplicant and hostapd for wireless client and access point functionality. 1 other source

docs

  • Suite containing wpa_supplicant (WPA/WPA2/WPA3 supplicant for wireless clients) and hostapd (IEEE 802.11 access point and authentication server).

Lines in monospace are the tool's own words: help text parsed from its source, or an endpoint from its API document. Under release, a line is our summary of a dated release. Under docs, it is quoted from the tool's own documentation or website. Each links back to the source it came from.

Screenshots

From the release notes, newest first. Click one to see it full size.

2.12 Aug 16, 2026

Score card

  1. Shipping velocity releases a month, last 12 months
  2. Documentation quality release-notes rubric, 0–100
  3. Breaking-change discipline how rarely a release breaks users, and notice given
  4. Maintenance risk quiet time against its own cadence, maintainers
  5. Innovation & surface new capabilities, API and MCP surface
  6. Community health
  7. Contributor trend distinct committers, this year against last
  8. Maintainer concentration bus factor now against a year ago
  9. Issue backlog trend issues closed per issue opened, 12 months
  10. Responsiveness median time to a maintainer’s first reply

Nine scores for hostapd-mana, each built from the releases, notes and API history this site tracks — and, on Researcher and Business, where it stands among every measured tool in its category and how that has moved.

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Each score is 0–100 on a published rubric, derived from data this site already shows. A dimension we cannot measure says so — it is never scored 0 and never enters a rank.

How this is scored
  • Shipping velocity — releases a month over the last 12 months, on a log scale where 16 a month scores 100. Needs 3 releases in the window.
  • Documentation quality — the release-notes rubric published on the analytics page, unchanged.
  • Breaking-change discipline — the share of releases carrying a breaking change (none scores 100, half or more scores 0). Only projects that label breaking changes are measured: a clean record cannot be told from an unlabelled one.
  • Maintenance risk — quiet time measured against the tool's own release cadence (quiet longer than 90 days and three typical gaps scores 0), plus the number of active maintainers and whether contributors are growing, where known. Higher is lower risk.
  • Innovation & surface — new capabilities in the feature ledger this year, API and MCP operations added, and the share of commits that are features: the mean of whichever we hold.
  • Community health (open-source tools only) — each is a direction, not a size: contributors this year against last, the bus factor now against a year ago, and issues closed per issue opened, where steady scores 50, doubled 100 and halved 0; plus the median time to a maintainer's first reply (an hour scores about 100, a month or more 0). A commercial card has no repository and carries none of the four.
  • Documented delivery (commercial tools) — when a vendor's documented new capabilities have slowed against its own baseline, that counts against the overall standing as heavily as two low dimensions. Steady delivery, or too little history to judge, leaves the standing alone; it is never a sixth score.
  • Open-source tools are scored on repository signals; commercial tools on their published changelog. Ranks compare tools within one category and one profile and need at least five measured peers; the overall standing needs three ranked dimensions. Best-in-breed or consolidator is a shape, not a quality, and is never scored.

Release-note detail over time

See how much detail hostapd-mana puts in its release notes, quarter by quarter, and compare it with tracked tools in the same category. This history uses up to ten retained, reviewed notes per tool; sparse or blank older quarters may reflect that limit.

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Releases

2 entries

  1. August 20261
  3. January 20191

    2 entries

    1. 2.12 Aug 16, 2026 · issue 048

      hostapd-mana 2.12 ports to hostapd 2.12 with full 802.11be 6 GHz support and all 16 EAP credential-intercept modes.

      └──▷ GET THIS VERSION 
      $ git clone --branch 2.12 https://github.com/sensepost/hostapd-mana.git
# already have the repo? check out this version:
$ git checkout 2.12
      • Supports 802.11be (Wi-Fi 7) and 6 GHz band operation, enabling rogue AP and credential-intercept testing against modern 802.11be clients.
      • Maintains all 16 EAP mode interceptions (credential capture and credential-material capture) on 802.11be 6 GHz networks.

      2 details in Everything

    2. 2.6.5 Jan 10, 2019 · release notes

      hostapd-mana 2.6.5 adds direct WPAWPAA Wi-Fi authentication and encryption standard maintained by the Wi-Fi Alliance, replacing WEP; cyber tools target it to audit wireless network credentials and key exchange handshakes./2 handshake capture in hccapx format

      └──▷ GET THIS VERSION 
      $ git clone --branch 2.6.5 https://github.com/sensepost/hostapd-mana.git
# already have the repo? check out this version:
$ git checkout 2.6.5
      • Adds ability to capture WPA/2 handshakes from stations attempting to associate to a WPA/2 network directly to hashcat's hccapx format.

      1 detail in Everything

    Project health

    Issue, contributor and maintainer activity in sensepost/hostapd-mana, 2023-10 – 2026-09, as of 2026-09-25. Twelve-month figures first; the trend lines run the whole window.

    1. Contributors 123 −26 vs prior 12 months
    2. Maintainers 10 +12 joined · −22 left, last 12 months
    3. Bus factor 4 committers behind half the commits
    4. Community-filed not measured of issues opened, last 12 months
    5. Median time to close not measured issues closed, last 12 months
    6. Open backlog 20 of 46 issues ever filed
    1. Issues opened / month 0 · 0 communitymaintainers
    2. Open backlog 20
    3. Contributors / month 1
    4. Commits / month 1
    5. Stars 632
    Issue themes, last 12 months not measured

    Counts from the project's public repository and git history; no individuals are identified. Maintainers are the committers covering 80% of the last year's commits. how we measure this

    Libraries its release ships

    What its latest release locks, checked against known advisories.

    None of its release's images build from a lockfile we can read.

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