Comments on: Latest and greatest in wi-fi cracking for Windows?

Question: Latest and greatest in wi-fi cracking for Windows?

obiwanwasabi — Mon, 29 May 2006 16:35:25 -0800

What's the state-of-the-art for cracking wi-fi under Windows? Knoppix CD with aircrack / airsnort / kismet? Or are there some decent Windows binaries these days?

By: moift

moift — Mon, 29 May 2006 18:00:07 -0800

Airsnort works with windows if you download a bunch of stuff. Said stuff is all in win binary form, at least.

By: moift

moift — Mon, 29 May 2006 18:02:05 -0800

By: cwhitfcd

cwhitfcd — Mon, 29 May 2006 18:17:47 -0800

BackTrack is the latest and greatest live CD.

By: moift

moift — Mon, 29 May 2006 19:55:38 -0800

Recovering a WEP key is not a crime. Give the benefit of the doubt or take it MetaTalk.

By: moift

moift — Mon, 29 May 2006 19:55:50 -0800

*to

By: o0o0o

o0o0o — Mon, 29 May 2006 20:04:18 -0800

Recovering a WEP key is not a crime.

Nor is testing the security of your own network. A lot of people are required to run these types of tools as part of their IT/IS job.

By: Steven C. Den Beste

Steven C. Den Beste — Mon, 29 May 2006 20:27:53 -0800

Recovering a WEP key for anyone's network besides your own is a violation of the DMCA. For all intents and purposes, essentially any unauthorized attempt to crack anyone's cipher violates the DMCA.

I happen to believe that large parts of the DMCA are unconstitutional, but it's on the books right now as law, and I don't recommend anyone sacrifice themselves to become a constitutional test case.

By: zabuni

zabuni — Mon, 29 May 2006 20:38:10 -0800

Microsoft drivers for wireless cards are funky. You may or may not have to download another wireless driver, that may or may not work well with normal use. ++ with all commercial packages.

It really does depend on the card in use. I'd say that a live CD would be a better bet than installing windows ports.

A note: the DMCA is mainly interested with the cracking of copy protection schemes, which WEP may or may not be (usually not). It is however, probably against some really mean FCC laws. Frankly, I'd rather get sued under the DMCA.

By: signal

signal — Mon, 29 May 2006 20:48:06 -0800

Also, the DMCA is mainly interested in the US, not Australia.

By: o0o0o

o0o0o — Mon, 29 May 2006 20:51:23 -0800

... it really doesn't sound like an IT professional ...

Hah! Apparently you don't know very many IT professionals. Also, maybe you should have started with the definition of a network before delving into specific use cases.

That said, Linux is where it's at for Wifi network detection and penetration testing. There's also a lot of other network tools at your disposal this way.

By: iamabot

iamabot — Mon, 29 May 2006 23:22:01 -0800

Security by obscurity is not responsible, the information is out there and a better educated populace is a safer populace. Perhaps this question will lead someone else to pen test their own network and discover there are better ways to do things.

With that said, Backtrack as noted above is the latest and greatest for the intel platform. Kismac for the Apple crowd is also excellent.

Depending on what you're trying to crack you will either have great luck or no luck at all. As a courtesy, do not leverage packet injection and de-authentication attacks to generate your unique IV's, it's just rude.

By: obiwanwasabi

obiwanwasabi — Tue, 30 May 2006 00:16:09 -0800

Well, I'm in Australia, and while things between us are much closer under the free trade agreement, I don't think the DMCA has much sway here (who needs it in a country where it was illegal to tape "Friends" til a few weeks ago?). And yes, if it matters, I'm a government auditing professional, and although I have an IT background (if you can call an MCSE from the late 90s such a thing), I'm no longer an IT specialist, hence the question. Either that, or I'm a script kiddy who's pulling your leg (MeFi being the latest hotspot for script kiddies and all) - how would you tell?

Or maybe I'm both - a quiet, portly auditor by day who wreaks havoc on lonely, vulnerable coffee shops and their networks by night, taking advantage of the public trust that IT / auditing professionals would never, ever break the law, and so it's safe to tell them anything and everything. Or maybe I just want to see what a wardriver sees when he rolls down my street (I'm on 56K dial-up at home, so good luck with that). Maybe I want to show a friend who's convinced that 128-bit WEP is good enough for anybody a thing or two. Or maybe I just want to know, just because, full stop (sorry, period). I guess that's a thoughtcrime these days. Best not share information about anything with anybody - who knows what they might do with it? Something irresponsible, no doubt.

And yes, I could troll around the vast expanses of crackland looking for the answer - those parts that aren't blocked by SmartFilter, or which aren't blanketed with X-rated banner ads, anyway, the latter going down a real treat with the other folks in the office and the wife at home. Even then, I'd rather come to AskMeFi and get a speedy, considered response from polite people who speak English, rather than "l0l 41r5|\|0r7 0|\| d0z3 is teh suk!!1! l8r k thx bye".

Anyways, thanks for the pointers to airsnort on XP, BackTrack, the tips on drivers and the courtesy note on packet injection - very much appreciated.