Hacking Wireless Networks

This example is for educational purposes only so that I could help you to recognize porousness that exist in WiFi network

 Building the foundation for testing Wireless Networks

Wireless local-area networks - often referred to as WLANs or Wi-Fi networks - are all the rage these days.

Wireless networks are based on the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 set of standards for WLANs.

Why you need to test your Wireless Systems

Wireless networks have been notoriously insecure since the early days of the 802.11b standard of the late 1990s. Since the standard`s inception, major 802.11 weaknesses, such as physical security weaknesses, encryption flaws, and authentication problems, have been discovered. Wireless attacks have been on the rise ever since. The problem has gotten so bad that two wireless security standards have emerged to help fight back at the attackers: WPA and WPA2

The Wireless Hacking Process

1. Thou shalt set thy goals
2. Thou shalt plan thy work, lest thou go off course,
3. Thou shalt obtain permission,
4. Thou shalt work ethically,
5. Thou shalt work diligently,
6. Thou shalt respect the privacy of others,
7. Thou shalt do no harm,
8. thou shalt use a scientific process,
9. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor`s tools,
10. Thou shalt report all thy findings.

Ethical hackers use laptops. Laptops have dropped dramatically in price that last few years, so they have become more accessible. You don`t need a lot of processing power, but, to paraphrase Tim Allen more power is better. You can use almost any operating system, including Windows although you will find you get better results when using a newer and supported operating system. In addition to the laptop, you need the following components to get maximum results you ethical hacking.

• Hacking software
• A wireless network interface card (NIC) that can be inserted into your laptop - preferably one with an external antenna jack
• External antenna (directional or omnidirectional) with the proper pigtail cable to connect your external antenna to your wireless NIC
• Portable global positioning system (GPS)
• DC power cable or DC to AC power inverter to power your laptop from your cars 12-volt DC cigarette lighter plug socket. These are widely available from RadioShack, Kmart, Staples, CompUSA, or Wal-Mart stores.

Hacking Software

To do your job properly you need a selection of freeware and commercial software. You need the following software to do al the hacking exercises in the tutorial.

• Partitioning or emulation software
• Signal strength-testing software
• Packer analyzer
• Wardriving software
• Password crackers
• Packet Injectors

Using software emulators

In a perfect world, all the tools available would work on the same operating system. To solve this problem, people often build dual-boot or multi-boot workstations. When everyting`s installed, you can select the operating sytem you want to use when you boot the system. Say you using some of the version of Windos OS and you decide to use WEPcrack - wich is available only on linux - on the access points you just identified with NetStumbler. You shut down windows, reboot system and select Red Hat Linux operating system. Fliping back and forth a lot eats up valuable time. And mangling your partitions and traying to make the operating systems coexist on the same hardware can be challenging.

Enter software emulators. Software emulators allow you to emulate a guest operating sytem by ruinning it on top of host operating sytem. you can run Linux emulation on Windows host, and vice versa. To emulate Windows or Dos on Linux host, you can choose one of the following Windows-based Emulator>

• Bochs
• DOSEMU
• Plex86
• VMware
• WINE
• WIn4Lin

Alternatively you can emulate Linuh on a Windows host. to do this choose one of the following Linux-based emulators:

• Cygwin
• VMware