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WIFI HACKING – CRACKING WEP PASSWORDS: The Ultimate Cheat Sheet



Wireless hacking tools are of two types. One can be used to sniff the network and monitor what is happening in the network. The other kind of tool is used to hack WEP/WPA keys. These are the popular tools used for wireless password cracking and network troubleshooting.




WIFI HACKING – CRACKING WEP PASSWORDS



Aircrack-ng is one of the most popular wireless password cracking tools that you can use for 802.11a/b/g WEP and WPA cracking. Aircrack-ng uses the best algorithms to recover wireless passwords by capturing packets. Once enough packets have been gathered, it tries to recover the password. To make the attack faster, it implements a standard FMS attack with some optimizations.


Cracking WEP is fast and easy with commonly available Windows- or Linux-based tools. The length of the WEP key, 40- or 104-bit, is practically irrelevant, and with the software tools currently available, any novice can crack WEP in minutes given enough captured data. With users being added to the WLAN every day in most enterprises and the amount of data going over the WLAN growing exponentially, capturing enough data to crack WEP is often simple.The moral of the story with WEP is simply that it should never be used when stronger authentication and encryption mechanisms are available. Cracking WPA/WPA2-Personal (which uses a passphrase) is a much more difficult task than cracking WEP, but it still isn't an overwhelming task. Given the right dictionary file(s) and the latest versions of WPA cracking tools, cracking WPA/WPA2-Personal can happen in a short time if a very strong passphrase isn't used by the network administrator. The Wi-Fi Alliance suggests at least 20 characters with lower case, upper case, numbers, and special characters and use of WPA2 over WPA whenever possible.Tools such as Aircrack-ng can be easily used both for cracking WEP and WPA/WPA2-Passphrase. Since Aircrack-ng is available for Windows, it gives the ability to do sophisticated hacking to a novice. Use of WPA/WPA2-Personal should be limited to small installations such as SOHO - hence the name "Personal" - or very specific scenarios in SMB installations (like VoWLAN phones). When WPA/WPA2-Personal is used, it is best for only the network administrator to have the passphrase. He/she would enter it into every laptop, VoWLAN phone, handheld PC, or other wireless device manually without giving it to the user. Of course this is not scalable, but it's more secure than having 5-50 users knowing the passphrase.More secure alternatives to static WPA/WPA2-Personal passphrases have been developed, such as Ruckus Wireless's Dynamic PSK solution. More information on this solution can be found here: -dynamic-psk.pdf If you just can't bring yourself to make a strong passphrase, there are tools just for this purpose, such as Juiper's PassAmp utility (a free download) and the website: Having tools like these will help you get past the mental block of creating such strong passphrases.


Wireless hacking can be defined as an attack on wireless networks or access points that offer confidential information such as authentication attacks, wifi passwords, admin portal access, and other similar data. Wireless hacking is performed for gaining unauthorized access to a private wifi network.


The increase in WiFi usage has led to increased wireless attacks. Any attack on wireless networks or access points that provide substantial information is referred to as wireless hacking. This information can be in the form of WiFi passwords, admin portal access, authentication attacks, etc. To understand wireless hacking, one of the most important things to understand are the protocols involved in wireless networks. Attacks are mostly made on the internal steps of the protocol stack. IEEE 802.11 specifies the standards for wireless networks; let us discuss some algorithms that are used in WiFi networks:


WPA/WPA2 cracking technique: Our devices have wireless passwords stored so that we do not enter the password on the same device again and again. The attackers take advantage of this by forcefully de-authenticating all the devices on the network. The devices will try to auto-connect to the access point by completing the 4-way handshake. This handshake is recorded and has the hashed password. The hashed password can be brute-forced by using a rainbow table.


Wireless hacking tools are the software programs specifically designed to hack wireless networks by either leveraging dictionary attacks for cracking WEP/WPA protected wireless networks or exploiting susceptibilities in wifi systems.


Hacking or gaining unauthorized access to wireless networks is an illegal act, an activity not encouraged. These wireless hacking tools deploy various techniques to crack wifi networks such as sidejacking, brute force attacks, dictionary attacks, evil twin, encryption, and Man-In-the-Middle Attacks.


We have compiled a list of the best wifi password hacking or recovery tools that can be used for educational purposes and to hack your own systems or wifi networks. If you are looking to become a cybersecurity professional, you would have to understand wifi hacking and learn about wireless technologies.


Cain & Abel is one of the most popular tools that is used for password cracking. The tool is able to sniff the network, crack encrypted passwords using various password cracking techniques, and perform cryptanalysis attacks. It can also discover wireless keys by analyzing wireless protocols.


Cloudcracker is a cloud-based solution for cracking the passwords of various utilities. The tool uses dictionary-based attacks to crack the passwords. The size of the dictionary ranges up to 10 digits. Just upload the handshake file along with a few other details and you are all set.


KisMac is a wireless network discovery hacking tool specifically for Mac OS X. This classic 802.11 WEP/WPA cracking tool is not for beginners, rather, quite popular among advanced professionals. It tries to crack WEP and WPA keys by scanning for networks passively on supported WiFi cards by any flaw or leveraging any flaw or using brute force.


KisMAC has many features that make it similar to another hacking tool Kismet. This tool can help you collect crucial information about surrounding wireless networks. It has a security scanner app that lets you sketch wifi maps, shows you the logged-in clients, and detect SSIDs.


IKECrack is an open-source wireless hacking tool for cracking IPsec/IKE authentication. This tool is specially built to capture Internet Key Exchange packets. Also, it's an effective tool for VPN network cracking. IKECrack hacks into a wireless network by obtaining and using the identity and secret key combinations of the network.


KARMA is an open-source hacking software that uses the probing techniques leveraged by a client of a WLAN. The station explores the list of preferred wifi networks and searches for a Wireless LAN for making the SSID open to access for the attackers.


Yersinia is an open-source wireless hacking software designed for Unix-like operating systems. This tool is capable of detecting susceptibilities in Layer 2 network protocols. It is a powerful tool for analyzing and testing the deployed wifi networks. Yersinia is capable to identify security vulnerabilities in the following network protocols:


One of the key features of Airgeddon is that it can perform brute force attacks after decrypting the offline passwords that have been captured. Also, it allows penetration testers to perform a DoS attack over a wifi network by leveraging another popular Wireless tool called aireplay-ng and various methods such as mdk3, mdk4.


There are many wireless hacking tools available in the market, 15 of which we have discussed in this article. It is to be noted that the tools are discussed in random order and not in any form of priority or superiority over the other. The tools discussed here are not only designed for wireless hackers but are also used by WiFi admins and programmers working on WiFi-based projects alike. These tools can either be used for monitoring the network or cracking the keys to getting access. You may need to use multiple tools to get the desired output as none of the tools would fulfil all the requirements. As a wireless hacker or security professional, you should have some of these tools in your arsenal readily available for quick analysis. Some of the tools perform brute force to crack the keys, make sure that you have an updated master key dump or make a customized list from your experience. A WiFi hacker will always have a customized list prepared by collecting various lists. The hacking program will only be as good as the wordlist itself.


Getting an idea of these wireless hacking solutions will make you a better security wireless expert, cybersecurity expert, or network security professional. This will help you in configuring your wifi networks properly and refrain from falling into the trap of similar network security hazards.


You now have enough knowledge about WiFi hacking software to start your journey towards becoming a wireless password hacker. Lastly, we strongly recommend using wifi hacking tools for learning purposes. Remember, hacking wireless networks to get unauthorized access is a cyber-crime.


If you care about password cracking, hardware acceleration or Wi-Fi protection this interview with our friend Sethioz is certainly for you. Being currently a freelance security tester Sethioz kindly shared his experience in cracking passwords using video cards, which in its turn derived from his gaming interest in cards. His personal experience may be very helpful to those whose concern about password cracking is not trivial.


CowPatty is an automated wireless cracking tool that was designed to crack pre-shared keys (PSK) and WPA protected wireless network using brute force attack. This WiFi hacker has a command-line interface and shows the cracked passwords on a word list. It is very simple to use but it may take some time to hack passwords. 2ff7e9595c


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