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Oct 17, 2017 The main reason why it doesn’t make your network more secure is because it’s really easy to spoof a MAC address. A network hacker, which can literally be anyone since the tools are so easy to use, can easily figure out the MAC addresses on your network and then spoof that address onto their computer. Actually, Windows are much-much harder to hack, compared to Linux. But you probably meant 'to hack' as in 'to violate' and not as in 'to playfully/cleverly fiddle with their internals'. There are certainly many factors and comparing some.

Wireless networks are accessible to anyone within the router’s transmission radius. This makes them vulnerable to attacks. Hotspots are available in public places such as airports, restaurants, parks, etc.

In this tutorial, we will introduce you to common techniques used to exploit weaknesses in wireless network security implementations. We will also look at some of the countermeasures you can put in place to protect against such attacks.

Topics covered in this tutorial

What is a wireless network?

A wireless network is a network that uses radio waves to link computers and other devices together. The implementation is done at the Layer 1 (physical layer) of the OSI model.

How to access a wireless network?

You will need a wireless network enabled device such as a laptop, tablet, smartphones, etc. You will also need to be within the transmission radius of a wireless network access point. Most devices (if the wireless network option is turned on) will provide you with a list of available networks. If the network is not password protected, then you just have to click on connect. If it is password protected, then you will need the password to gain access.

Wireless Network Authentication

Since the network is easily accessible to everyone with a wireless network enabled device, most networks are password protected. Let’s look at some of the most commonly used authentication techniques.

WEP

WEP is the acronym for Wired Equivalent Privacy. It was developed for IEEE 802.11 WLAN standards. Its goal was to provide the privacy equivalent to that provided by wired networks. WEP works by encrypting the data been transmitted over the network to keep it safe from eavesdropping.

WEP Authentication

Open System Authentication (OSA) – this methods grants access to station authentication requested based on the configured access policy.

Shared Key Authentication (SKA) – This method sends to an encrypted challenge to the station requesting access. The station encrypts the challenge with its key then responds. If the encrypted challenge matches the AP value, then access is granted.

WEP Weakness

WEP has significant design flaws and vulnerabilities.

• The integrity of the packets is checked using Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC32). CRC32 integrity check can be compromised by capturing at least two packets. The bits in the encrypted stream and the checksum can be modified by the attacker so that the packet is accepted by the authentication system. This leads to unauthorized access to the network.
• WEP uses the RC4 encryption algorithm to create stream ciphers. The stream cipher input is made up of an initial value (IV) and a secret key. The length of the initial value (IV) is 24 bits long while the secret key can either be 40 bits or 104 bits long. The total length of both the initial value and secret can either be 64 bits or 128 bits long.The lower possible value of the secret key makes it easy to crack it.
• Weak Initial values combinations do not encrypt sufficiently. This makes them vulnerable to attacks.
• WEP is based on passwords; this makes it vulnerable to dictionary attacks.
• Keys management is poorly implemented. Changing keys especially on large networks is challenging. WEP does not provide a centralized key management system.
• The Initial values can be reused

Because of these security flaws, WEP has been deprecated in favor of WPA

WPA

WPA is the acronym for Wi-Fi Protected Access. It is a security protocol developed by the Wi-Fi Alliance in response to the weaknesses found in WEP. It is used to encrypt data on 802.11 WLANs. It uses higher Initial Values 48 bits instead of the 24 bits that WEP uses. It uses temporal keys to encrypt packets.

WPA Weaknesses

• The collision avoidance implementation can be broken
• It is vulnerable to denial of service attacks
• Pre-shares keys use passphrases. Weak passphrases are vulnerable to dictionary attacks.

How to Crack Wireless Networks

WEP cracking

Cracking is the process of exploiting security weaknesses in wireless networks and gaining unauthorized access. WEP cracking refers to exploits on networks that use WEP to implement security controls. There are basically two types of cracks namely;

• Passive cracking– this type of cracking has no effect on the network traffic until the WEP security has been cracked. It is difficult to detect.
• Active cracking– this type of attack has an increased load effect on the network traffic. It is easy to detect compared to passive cracking. It is more effective compared to passive cracking.

WEP Cracking Tools

• Aircrack– network sniffer and WEP cracker. Can be downloaded from http://www.aircrack-ng.org/
• WEPCrack– this is an open source program for breaking 802.11 WEP secret keys. It is an implementation of the FMS attack. http://wepcrack.sourceforge.net/
• Kismet- this can include detector wireless networks both visible and hidden, sniffer packets and detect intrusions. https://www.kismetwireless.net/
• WebDecrypt– this tool uses active dictionary attacks to crack the WEP keys. It has its own key generator and implements packet filters. http://wepdecrypt.sourceforge.net/

WPA Cracking

WPA uses a 256 pre-shared key or passphrase for authentications. Short passphrases are vulnerable to dictionary attacks and other attacks that can be used to crack passwords. The following tools can be used to crack WPA keys.

• CowPatty– this tool is used to crack pre-shared keys (PSK) using brute force attack. http://wirelessdefence.org/Contents/coWPAttyMain.htm
• Cain & Abel– this tool can be used to decode capture files from other sniffing programs such as Wireshark. The capture files may contain WEP or WPA-PSK encoded frames. http://www.softpedia.com/get/Security/Decrypting-Decoding/Cain-and-Abel.shtml

General Attack types

• Sniffing– this involves intercepting packets as they are transmitted over a network. The captured data can then be decoded using tools such as Cain & Abel.
• Man in the Middle (MITM) Attack– this involves eavesdropping on a network and capturing sensitive information.
• Denial of Service Attack– the main intent of this attack is to deny legitimate users network resources. FataJack can be used to perform this type of attack. More on this in article

Cracking Wireless network WEP/WPA keys

It is possible to crack the WEP/WPA keys used to gain access to a wireless network. Doing so requires software and hardware resources, and patience. The success of such attacks can also depend on how active and inactive the users of the target network are.

We will provide you with basic information that can help you get started. Backtrack is a Linux-based security operating system. It is developed on top of Ubuntu. Backtrack comes with a number of security tools. Backtrack can be used to gather information, assess vulnerabilities and perform exploits among other things.

Some of the popular tools that backtrack has includes;

• Metasploit
• Wireshark
• Aircrack-ng
• NMap
• Ophcrack

Cracking wireless network keys requires patience and resources mentioned above. At a minimum, you will need the following tools

A wireless network adapter with the capability to inject packets (Hardware)

• Kali Operating System. You can download it from here https://www.kali.org/downloads/
• Be within the target network’s radius. If the users of the target network are actively using and connecting to it, then your chances of cracking it will be significantly improved.
• Sufficient knowledge of Linux based operating systems and working knowledge of Aircrack and its various scripts.
• Patience, cracking the keys may take a bit of sometime depending on a number of factors some of which may be beyond your control. Factors beyond your control include users of the target network using it actively as you sniff data packets.

How to Secure wireless networks

In minimizing wireless network attacks; an organization can adopt the following policies

• Changing default passwords that come with the hardware
• Enabling the authentication mechanism
• Access to the network can be restricted by allowing only registered MAC addresses.
• Use of strong WEP and WPA-PSK keys, a combination of symbols, number and characters reduce the chance of the keys been cracking using dictionary and brute force attacks.
• Firewall Software can also help reduce unauthorized access.

Hacking Activity: Crack Wireless Password

In this practical scenario, we are going touse Cain and Abel to decode the stored wireless network passwords in Windows. We will also provide useful information that can be used to crack the WEP and WPA keys of wireless networks.

Decoding Wireless network passwords stored in Windows

• Download Cain & Abel from the link provided above.
• Open Cain and Abel

• Ensure that the Decoders tab is selected then click on Wireless Passwords from the navigation menu on the left-hand side
• Click on the button with a plus sign

• Assuming you have connected to a secured wireless network before, you will get results similar to the ones shown below

• The decoder will show you the encryption type, SSID and the password that was used.

Windows Network Password

Summary

• Wireless network transmission waves can be seen by outsiders, this possesses many security risks.
• WEP is the acronym for Wired Equivalent Privacy. It has security flaws which make it easier to break compared to other security implementations.
• WPA is the acronym for Wi-Fi Protected Access. It has security compared to WEP
• Intrusion Detection Systems can help detect unauthorized access
• A good security policy can help protect a network.

In this tutorial, we will be searching at the way to bypass MAC address filtering on a wireless network. MAC filtering, or MAC white- or blacklisting, is regularly used as a safety measure to prevent non-whitelisted or blacklisted MAC addresses from connecting to the wi-fi network. MAC Address stands for media get admission to manage address and is a unique identifier assigned in your community interface. With MAC filtering you may specify MAC addresses that are allowed or no longer allowed to connect with the network. For many activities MAC filtering may be sufficient as a security degree however in others it’s far simply no longer. MAC filtering is definitely useless to shield company networks and statistics or to save you networks from being hacked over WiFi because is it so smooth to bypass. When MAC filtering is in place you may easily determine whitelisted MAC addresses by means of scanning for connected clients using a tool like airodump-ng. In this case we can expect that each connected MAC cope with is a part of the whitelist or not at the black listing.

In this tutorial we can be pass MAC filtering on a TP hyperlink WR-841N router via spoofing the MAC deal with of a linked purchaser. The linked customer’s MAC address is whitelisted, otherwise it would not have been able to connect with the wi-fi network. We will placed our wifi adapter in monitoring mode and retrieve the MAC cope with of related customers with Airodump-NG on Kali Linux. Hacking the WiFi community password is out of doors the scope of this educational. You can have a take a look at the following WiFi hacking tutorials and gear to discover ways to retrieve the password (and save you this from taking place):

Settings for MAC Filter

First we will be configuring the MAC filtering functionality in the router settings. We will be adding one client to the whitelist which will be our connected client.

Now try to connect from other client in Kali Linux 2.0.

Even if we use the right password is does not allow us to connect to the wireless network. We end up in an endless loop without authentication. This tells us the MAC filtering is active and working like a charm.

MAC Filter Bypassing

First we’ll have to put our WiFi adapter in monitoring mode using Airmon-ng and kill all the processes Kali Linux is complaining about.

airmon-ng start wlan0

kill [pid]

Is A Mac Network Or Windows Network Easier To Hack Pc

Then we launch Airodump-ng to locate the wireless network and the connected client(s) using the following command:

airodump-ng –c [channel]–bssid [target router MAC Address]–i wlan0mon

Airodump-ng now shows us a list of all connected clients at the bottom of the terminal. The second column lists the MAC Addresses of the connected client which we will be spoofing in order to authenticate with the wireless network.

MAC Address Spoofing with Macchanger

Microsoft Windows Network Downloads

Now that we know a MAC deal with that is whitelisted inside the TP Link router settings we are able to use it to spoof our own MAC address in order to authenticate with the community. Let’s spoof the MAC address of your wi-fi adapter but first we take need to take down the tracking interface wlan0mon and the wlan0 interface so that it will exchange the MAC deal with. We can try this by way of the usage of the subsequent command.

Is A Mac Network Or Windows Network Easier To Hack Windows 10

airmon-ng stop wlan0mon

Now we take down the wireless interface who’s MAC address we want to spoof with the following command.

ifconfig wlan0 down

Now we can use Macchanger to change the MAC address.

macchanger -m [New MAC Address] wlan0

And bring it up again:

ifconfig wlan0 up

Now that we have changed the MAC address of our wireless adapter to a whitelisted MAC address in the router we can try to authenticate with the network and see if we’re able to connect.