Wireless Hacking Basics WPA Dictionary Attack, Handshake, Data Capture, Part 5 - Backtrack

Getting a Handshake and a Data Capture, WPA Dictionary Attack

Introduction To Kali and WiFi Pen Testing
How to Install Kali Linux
WEP Hacking
Kali Linux and Reaver
Getting a Handshake and a Data Capture, WPA Dictionary Attack
Using Aircrack and a Dictionary to Crack a WPA Data Capture
Cracking a WPA Capture with the GPU using HashCat
Creating a Dictionary / Wordlist with Crunch Part 8

WPA Dictionary Attack
WPA and WPA 2 is the newest encryption for wireless devices, as far as cracking them, they are the same so I will use WPA from here on.

A dictionary attack is one of the easiest to understand, but the least likely to find a password. This is often the last resort because while it does work it depends on the dictionary used and the computing power.

Basically a data capture of the router is captured wirelessly when someone logs into the router. Then a dictionary file with a bunch of names and combination of names/numbers is used to throw at the data capture until the password is found.

If someone knows the person then they may be able to guess the password but otherwise this can take a long time and never find anything. If you are stuck using this method, thinking about how the password might be structured will be crucial along with computing power. The data capture could be copied between multiple computers to split the things up. A to F on one G to Z on another. Cloud computing might be a option to harness someone else computing power and so on.

There are other ways such as Rainbow Tables, or the video card attack but the simplest or easiest way to understand a WPA dictionary attack is to use aircrack-ng. The way this works basically is that there is a large dictionary that you use to throw as many combinations of words as possible at the WPA encryption until it cracks. If the password is easy then it will find it quick, if it is a long paraphrase with many different number letter combinations then it will be much harder.

If you are unable to crack a WPA handshake capture there are online services that will do it for you for a price.

Getting a Handshake and a Data Capture

Commands used
airmon-ng
airmon-ng start wlan0
airodump-ng mon0

A data capture or handshake is a captured password when two devices talk wirelessly. The data capture will be stored in a file in a computer. It still will be encrypted and need to be cracked which is when a dictionary will be used to guess the password. This is a two step process capturing the data file being first.

Setup a test environment. 
Setup a test environment with a WPA or WPA2 encrypted router and set a password on it, and connect to it with a laptop, smartphone, or computer wirelessly.

Kali Linux should be up and running.

Open a terminal window.


Run the command “airmon-ng” to see if your USB adapter shows up, if it doesn’t, then some troubleshooting as to why it is not will have to be done. For this example I am using a Alfa AWUS036NH which uses the Ralink Rt2070/3070 chipset


Once you know the adapter is connected and operating run this command to get the adapter into monitor mode.

“airmon-ng start wlan0”


If all goes well the screen will scroll by with some information then say enabled on mon0. (Sometimes it will enable on mon1 or mon2 if it does use this.)  

Now we want to see what router or access point (AP) are out there so we run this command.
“airodump-ng mon0”



A picture like the above should come up and show all the routers out there. Here we want to target the router we want and copy the BSSID. Use CTRL+C to stop the terminal window and copy the BSSID.

Next we want to leave the original terminal alone and open a second terminal window. Here we are going to setup the adapter to do a data capture on the router we selected. After we do this we will have to wait for a wireless device to connect to the router and it will do a data capture. To do this we do the following command.

airodump-ng -c (channel) -w (Our file name) –bssid (bssid of AP) mon0
So for me it would be.
airodump-ng -c 6 -w dlink –bssid 00:26:5A:F2:57:2B mon0


The “-w” syntax is telling airodump-ng to write a file to the drive it can be given any name.

Then it should go into monitoring the AP for a data capture.


At this point we could simply wait for someone to connect wirelessly to the router. It can be any device their laptop, desktop or smart phone. When they connect the password will be transmitted back and forth to the device. If we wait then we stay in passive mode and no one can detect we are there. The top right of the terminal window will display WPA Handshake in the upper right when this happens.


Once it says “WPA handshake” on the top right the file it is done and the file is captured and written to the drive.

There is a way to speed this up if you know someone has a wireless device connected to the router by de-authenticating them or kicking them forcing them to reconnect. This will most likely be recorded by the router so this is not a passive method. To do this open another terminal window and type the following.

“aireplay-ng -0 5 -a (Target BSSID) mon0”

For me this would be.
aireplay-ng -0 5 -a 00:26:5A:F2:57:2B mon0

NEXT         :     Using Aircrack and a Dictionary to Crack a WPA Data Capture

3 Basic Tips To Prevent A DDoS Attack :- Hacking

Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks are always in top headlines worldwide, as they are plaguing websites in banks, and virtually of almost every organization having a prominent online presence. The main cause behind the proliferation of DDoS attacks is that there is a very low-cost that the attacker has to incur to put such attack in motion. Fortunately, today various prevention methods have been developed to tackle such attacks. Before delving further into understanding about the ways to prevent DDoS attack, let’s first understand what exactly a DDoS attack is!

Understanding DDOS Attack

A DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack is an attempt made by attackers to make computers’ resources inaccessible to its anticipated user. In order to carry out a DDOS attack the attackers never uses their own system; rather they create a network of zombie computers often called as a “Botnet” – that is a hive of computers, to incapacitate a website or a web server.

Let’s understand the basic idea! Now, the attacker notifies all the computers present on the botnet to keep in touch with a particular site or a web server, time and again. This increases traffic on the network that causes in slowing down the speed of a site for the intended users. Unfortunately, at times the traffic can be really high that could even lead to shutting a site completely.

3 Basic Tips to Prevent a DDoS Attack

There are several ways to prevent the DDOS attack; however, here in this guest post I’ll be covering three basic tips that will help you to protect your website from the DDoS attack.

1. Buy More Bandwidth.

One of the easiest methods is to ensure that you have sufficient bandwidth on your web. You’ll be able to tackle lots of low-scale DDOS attacks simply by buying more bandwidth so as to service the requests. How does it help? Well, distributed denial of service is a nothing more than a game of capacity. Let’s suppose you have 10,000 computer systems each distributing 1 Mbps directed towards your way. This means you’re getting 10 GB of data that is hitting your web server every second. Now, that’s causes a lot of traffic!

So to avoid such issue, you need to apply the same rule intended for normal redundancy. According to this technique, if you wish to have more web servers just multiply around diverse datacenters and next make use of load balancing. By spreading your traffic to various servers will help you balance the load and will most likely create large space adequate to handle the incessant increase in traffic.

However, there’s a problem with this method that is buying more bandwidth can be a costly affair. And as you’ll know that the current DDoS attacks are getting large, and can be a lot bigger exceeding your budget limit.

2. Opt for DDoS Mitigation Services.

A lot of network or Internet-service providers render DDoS mitigation capabilities. Look for an internet service provider having the largest DDoS protection and mitigation network, automated tools, and a pool of talented anti-DDoS technicians with the wherewithal to take action in real-time as per the varying DDoS attack characteristics. A viable alternative is to utilize a DDoS prevention appliance, which is specifically intended to discover and prevent distributed denial-of-service attacks.

3. Restricted Connectivity.

In case you have computer systems that are connected to the web directly, a better idea is to properly install/configure your routers and firewall so as to limit the connectivity. For an instance, while receiving some data from a client machine you can only allow traffic to pass from the machine only on a few chosen ports (like HTTP, POP, SMTP etc.) via the firewall.

Wrapping Up!

Websites are largely getting attacked by hackers every second. Denial-of-service attack is insanely getting huge and is creating a lot of problems for business organizations having strong online vicinity. In this guest post you’ll not only understand what a DDoS attack actually means, but will also come to know about a few type of methods to prevent DDoS attacks. Aforementioned are three tips that I’ll recommend you to run through to at least understand where to get started towards building a resilient web network with chances of surviving a DDoS attack.