This entry aims at illustrating current security flaws in WEP/WPA/WPA2.

Successfully cracking a wireless network assumes some basic familiarity with networking principles and terminology, as well as working with command-line tools. A basic familiarity with Linux can be helpful as well.

Attempting to access a network other than your own, or one you have permission to use is illegal!!!

To successfully crack WEP/WPA, you first need to be able to set your wireless network card in "monitor" mode to passively capture packets without being associated with a network. This NIC mode is driver-dependent, and only a relatively small number of network cards support this mode under Windows.

One of the best free utilities for monitoring wireless traffic and cracking WEP/WPA-PSK keys is the aircrack-ng suite, which we will use throughout this article. It has both Linux and Windows versions (provided your network card is supported under Windows). The aircrack-ng site has a comprehensive list of supported network cards.

If your network card is not supported under Windows, one can use a free Linux Live CD to boot the system. BackTrack3 is probably the most commonly used distribution, since it runs from a Live CD, and has aircrack-ng and a number of related tools already installed.

Here, we use aircrack-ng version 1.0 on a Linux partition (Fedora Core 10, 2.6 32-bit kernel) on a Sony Vaio SZ-680 laptop, using the built-in Intel 4965agn network card. If you're using the BackTrack 3 CD aircrack-ng is already installed, with this version of linux it is as simple as finding it with:

yum search aircrack-ng
yum install aircrack-ng

The aircrack-ng suite is a collection of command-line programs aimed at WEP and WPA-PSK key cracking. The ones we will be using are:

• airmon-ng - script used for switching the wireless network card to monitor mode
• airodump-ng - for WLAN monitoring and capturing network packets
• aireplay-ng - used to generate additional traffic on the wireless network
• aircrack-ng - used to recover the WEP key, or launch a dictionary attack on WPA-PSK using the captured data.

1. Setup (airmon-ng)

To capture network traffic without being associated with an access point, we need to set the wireless network card in monitor mode. To do that under Linux, in a terminal window (logged in as root), type:

iwconfig (to find all wireless network interfaces and their status)
airmon-ng start wlan0   (to set in monitor mode, you may have to substitute wlan0 for your own interface name)

Other related Linux commands:

• su (to switch to a root account)
• ifconfig (to list available network interfaces, my network card is listed as wlan0)
• ifconfig wlan0 down (to stop the specified network card)
• ifconfig wlan0 hw ether 00:11:22:33:44:55 (change the MAC address of a NIC - can even simulate the MAC of an associated client. NIC should be stopped before chaning MAC address)
• iwconfig wlan0 mode monitor (to set the network card in monitor mode)
• ifconfig wlan0 up (to start the network card)
• iwconfig - similar to ifconfig, but dedicated to the wireless interfaces.

2. Recon Stage (airodump-ng)

This step assumes you've already set your wireless network interface in monitor mode. It can be checked by executing the iwconfig command. Next step is finding available wireless networks, and choosing your target:

airodump-ng mon0 - monitors all channels, listing available access points and associated clients within range. It is best to select a target network with strong signal (PWR column), more traffic (Beacons/Data columns) and associated clients (listed below all access points). Once you've selected a target, note its Channel and BSSID (MAC address). Also note any STATION associated with the same BSSID (client MAC addresses). 

WEP is much easier to crack than WPA-PSK, as it only requires data capturing (between 20k and 40k packets), while WPA-PSK needs a dictionary attack on a captured handshake between the access point and an associated client which may or may not work.

3. Capture Data (airodump-ng)

To capture data into a file, we use the airodump-ng tool again, with some additional switches to target a specific AP and channel. You should restrict monitoring to a single channel to speed up data collection, otherwise the wireless card has to alternate between all channels. Assuming our wireless card is mon0, and we want to capture packets on channel 6 into a text file called data:

airodump-ng -c 6 bssid 00:0F:CC:7D:5A:74 -w data mon0  (-c6 switch would capture data on channel 6, bssid 00:0F:CC:7D:5A:74 is the MAC address of our target access point, -w data specifies that we want to save captured packets into a file called "data" in the current directory, mon0 is our wireless network adapter)

4. Increase Traffic (aireplay-ng) - optional step for WEP cracking

An active network can usually be penetrated within a few minutes. However, slow networks can take hours, even days to collect enough data for recovering the WEP key.

This optional step allows a compatible network interface to inject/generate packets to increase traffic on the wireless network, therefore greatly reducing the time required for capturing data. The aireplay-ng command should be executed in a separate terminal window, concurrent to airodump-ng. It requires a compatible network card and driver that allows for injection mode.

Assuming your network card is capable of injecting packets, in a separate terminal window try:

aireplay-ng -3 -b 00:0F:CC:7D:5A:74 -h 00:14:A5:2F:A7:DE -x 50 wlan0
-3  --> this specifies the type of attack, in our case ARP-request replay
-b ..... --> MAC address of access point
-h ..... --> MAC address of associated client from airodump
-x 50 --> limit to sending 50 packets per second
wlan0 --> our wireless network interface

5. Crack WEP (aircrack-ng)

WEP cracking is a simple process, only requiring collection of enough data to then extract the key and connect to the network. You can crack the key while capturing data. In fact, aircrack-ng will re-attempt cracking the key after every 5000 packets.

To attempt recovering the WEP key, in a new terminal window, type:

aircrack-ng data*.cap  (assuming your capture file is called data...cap, and is located in the same directory)

6. Crack WPA or WPA2 PSK (aircrack-ng)

WPA, unlike WEP rotates the network key on a per-packet basis, rendering the WEP method of penetration useless. Cracking a WPA-PSK/WPA2-PSK key requires a dictionary attack on a handshake between an access point and a client. What this means is, you need to wait until a wireless client associates with the network (or deassociate an already connected client so they automatically reconnect). All that needs to be captured is the initial "four-way-handshake" association between the access point and a client. Essentially, the weakness of WPA-PSK comes down to the passphrase. A short/weak passphrase makes it vulnerable to dictionary attacks.

To successfully crack a WPA-PSK network, you first need a capture file containing handshake data. This can be obtained using the same technique as with WEP in step 3 above, using airodump-ng.

You may also try to deauthenticate an associated client to speed up this process of capturing a handshake, using:

aireplay-ng --deauth 3 -a MAC_AP -c MAC_Client mon0  (where MAC_IP is the MAC address of the access point,  MAC_Client is the MAC address of an associated client, mon0 is your wireless NIC).

The command output looks something like:
12:34:56  Waiting for beakon frame (BSSID: 00:11:22:33:44:55:66) on channel 6
12:34:56 Sending 64 directed DeAuth. STMAC: [00:11:22:33:44:55:66]   [ 5:62 ACKs]

Note the last two numbers in brackets [ 5:62 ACKs] show the number of acknowledgements received from the client NIC (first number) and the AP (second number). It is important to have some number greater than zero in both. If the first number is zero, that indicates that you're too far from the associated client to be able to send deauth packets to it, you may want to try adding a reflector to your antenna (even a simple manilla folder with aluminum foil stapled to it works as a reflector to increase range and concentrate the signal significantly), or use a larger antenna.

Once you have captured a four-way handshake, you also need a large/relevant dictinary file (wordlists) with common passphrases.

You can, then execute the following command in a linux terminal window (assuming both the dictionary file and captured data file are in the same directory):

aircrack-ng -w wordlist capture_file (where wordlist is your dictionary file, and capture_file is a .cap file with a valid WPA handshake)

Cracking WPA-PSK and WPA2-PSK only needs 4 packets of data from the network (a handshake). After that, an offline dictionary attack on that handshake takes much longer, and will only succeed with weak passphrases and good dictionary files. A good size wordlist should be 20+ Megabytes in size, cracking a strong passphrase will take hours and is CPU intensive.

Cracking WPA/WPA2 usually takes many hours, testing tens of millions of possible keys for the chance to stumble on a combination of common numerals or dictionary words. Still, a weak/short/common/human-readable passphrase can be broken within a few minutes using an offline dictionary attack. A modern laptop can process over 10 Million possible keys in less than 3 hours.

WPA hashes the network key using the wireless access point's SSID as salt. This prevents the statistical key-grabbing techniques that broke WEP, and makes hash precomputation more dificult because the specific SSID needs to be added as salt for the hash. There are some tools like coWPAtty that can use precomputed hash files to speed up dictionary attacks. Those hash files can be very effective (since they're much less CPU intensive and therefore faster), but quite big in size. The Church of WiFi has computed hash tables for the 1000 most common SSIDs against a million common passphrases that are 7Gb and 33Gb in size.

what we can conclude...

WEP cracking has become increasingly easier over the years, and what used to take hundreds of thousands packets and days of capturing data can be accomplished today within 15 minutes with a mere 20k data frames.

WPA/WPA2-PSK encryption is holding its ground if using a strong, long key. However, weak pass-phrases are vulnerable to dictionary attacks. WPA/WPA2 may be on borrowed time as well...