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Kali Linux Wireless Penetration Testing

Kali Linux Wireless Penetration Testing Beginner's Guide

As wireless networks become ubiquitous in our lives, wireless penetration testing has become a key skill in the
repertoire of the professional penetration tester. The Kali Linux security distribution comes with a myriad of tools
used for networking attacks and detecting security loopholes.
Kali Linux Wireless Penetration Testing Beginner's Guide presents wireless pentesting from the ground
up, introducing all elements of penetration testing with each new technology. Learn various wireless testing
methodologies by example, from the basics of wireless routing and encryption through to detailed coverage of
hacking methods and attacks such as the Hirte and Caffe Latte.

What this book will do

for you...
Create a wireless lab for your experiments
Sniff out wireless packets and hidden networks
Capture and crack WPA-2 keys

Sa
m

pl

Discover hidden SSIDs

The Beginner's Guide approach...

Clear step-by-step instructions for the most

useful tasks

Sniff probe requests and track users

through SSID history

Learn by doing start working right away

Attack radius authentication systems

Inspiring, realistic examples that give you

Sniff wireless traffic and collect interesting data

Tasks and challenges to encourage

Leave out the boring bits

ideas for your own work

experimentation

$ 44.99 US
29.99 UK

community experience distilled

P U B L I S H I N G

Vivek Ramachandran
Cameron Buchanan

Decrypt encrypted traffic with stolen keys

Beginner's Guide

Explore the ins and outs of

wireless technologies

Learn by doing: less theory, more results

Kali Linux Wireless

Penetration Testing
Master wireless testing techniques to survey and attack
wireless networks with Kali Linux

Beginner's Guide

Prices do not include

local sales tax or VAT
where applicable

P U B L I S H I N G

Visit www.PacktPub.com for books, eBooks,

code, downloads, and PacktLib.

Vivek Ramachandran
Cameron Buchanan

In this package, you will find:

The authors biography

A preview chapter from the book, Chapter 1 'Wireless Lab Setup'
A synopsis of the books content
More information on Kali Linux Wireless Penetration Testing
Beginner's Guide

About the Authors

Vivek Ramachandran has been working on Wi-Fi Security since 2003. He discovered
the Caff e Latte attack and also broke WEP Cloaking, a WEP protection schema, publicly
in 2007 at DEF CON. In 2011, he was the first to demonstrate how malware could use
Wi-Fi to create backdoors, worms, and even botnets.
Earlier, he was one of the programmers of the 802.1x protocol and Port Security in
Cisco's 6500 Catalyst series of switches and was also one of the winners of the Microsoft
Security Shootout contest held in India among a reported 65,000 participants. He is best
known in the hacker community as the founder of SecurityTube.net, where he routinely
posts videos on Wi-Fi Security, assembly language, exploitation techniques, and so on.
SecurityTube.net receives over 100,000 unique visitors a month.
Vivek's work on wireless security has been quoted in BBC Online, InfoWorld,
MacWorld, The Register, IT World Canada, and so on. This year, he will speak or train at
a number of security conferences, including Blackhat, Defcon, Hacktivity, 44con, HITBML, BruCON Derbycon, Hashdays, SecurityZone, SecurityByte, and so on.
Cameron Buchanan is a penetration tester by trade and a writer in his spare time. He has
performed penetration tests around the world for a variety of clients across many
industries. Previously, he was a member of the RAF. He enjoys doing stupid things, such
as trying to make things fly, getting electrocuted, and dunking himself in freezing cold
water in his spare ti me. He is married and lives in London.

Kali Linux Wireless Penetration

Testing Beginner's Guide
Wireless Networks have become ubiquitous in today's world. Millions of people use it
worldwide every day at their homes, offices and public hotspots to logon to the Internet
and do both personal and professional work. Even though wireless makes life incredibly
easy and gives us such great mobility, it comes with risks. In recent times, insecure
wireless networks have been used to break into companies, banks and government
organizations. The frequency of these attacks is only intensified, as network
administrators are still clueless when it comes to securing wireless networks in a robust
and fool proof way.
Kali Linux Wireless Penetration Testing Beginner's Guide is aimed at helping the reader
understand the insecurities associated with wireless networks, and how to conduct
penetration tests to find and plug them. This is an essential read for those who would like
to conduct security audits on wireless networks and always wanted a step-by-step
practical. As every wireless attack explained in this book is immediately followed by a
practical demo, the learning is very complete.
We have chosen Kali Linux as the platform to test all the wireless attacks in this book.
Backtrack, as most of you may already be aware, is the world's most popular penetration
testing distribution. It contains hundreds of security and hacking tools, some of which we
will use in this course of this book.

What This Book Covers

Chapter 1, Wireless Lab Setup: There are dozens of exercises we will be doing in this
book. In order to be able to try them out, the reader will need to setup a wireless lab. This
chapter focuses on how to create a wireless testing lab using off -the-shelf hardware and
open source software. We will first look at hardware requirements, which include
wireless cards, antennas, access points and other Wi-Fi enabled devices, then we will
shift our focus to the soft ware requirements which include the operating system, Wi-Fi
drivers and security tools. Finally, we will create a test bed for our experiments and
verify different wireless configurations on it.

Chapter 2, WLAN and its Inherent Insecurities: This chapter focuses on inherent design
flaws in wireless networks, that make insecure out-of-the-box. We will begin with a
quick recap of the 802.11 WLAN protocols using a network analyzer called Wireshark.
This will give us a practical understanding about how these protocols work. Most
importantly, we will see how client and access point communication works at the packer
level by analyzing Management, Control and Data frames. We will then learn about
packet injection and packer sniffing in wireless networks, and look at some tools which
enable us to do the same.
Chapter 3, Bypassing WLAN Authentication: Now we get into how to break WLAN
authentication mechanism! We will go step by step and explore how to subvert Open and
Shared Key authentications. In the course of this, you will learn how to analyse wireless
packets and figure out the authentication mechanism of the network. We will also look at
how to break into networks with Hidden SSID and MAC Filtering enabled. These are two
common mechanisms employed by network administrators to make wireless networks
more stealthy and difficult to penetrate; however, these are extremely simple to bypass.
Chapter 4, WLAN Encryption Flaws: One of the most vulnerable parts of the WLAN
protocol is the Encryption schemas WEP, WPA and WPA2. Over the past decade
hackers have found multiple flaws in these schemas and have written publically available
software to break them and decrypt the data. Also, even though WPA/WPA2 is secure by
design, misconfiguring those opens up security vulnerabilities, that can be easily
exploited. In this chapter, we will understand the insecurities in each of these encryption
schemas and do practical demos on how to break them.
Chapter 5, Attacks on the WLAN Infrastructure: We will now shift our focus to WLAN
Infrastructure vulnerabilities. We will look at vulnerabilities created due to both
configuration and design problem. We will do practical demos of attacks such as access
point MAC spoofing, bit flipping and replay attacks, rogue access points, fuzzing and
denial of services. This chapter will give the reader a solid understanding of how to do a
penetration test of the WLAN infrastructure.
Chapter 6, Attacking the Client: This chapter might open your eyes if you always
believed that wireless client security was something you did not have to worry about!
Most people exclude the client from their list when they think about WLAN security.
This chapter will prove beyond doubt why the client is just as important as the access
point when penetration testing a WLAN network. We will look at how to compromise the
security using client side attacks such as Miss-Association, Caff e Latte, disassociation,
ad-hoc connections, fuzzing, honeypots and a host of others.

Chapter 7, Advanced WLAN Attacks: Now that we have already covered most of the
basic attacks on both the infrastructure and the client, we will look at more advanced
attacks in this chapter. These attacks typically involve using multiple basic attacks in
conjunction to break security in more challenging scenarios. Some of the attacks which
we will learn include wireless device fingerprinting, man-in-the-middle over wireless,
evading wireless intrusion detection and prevention systems, rogue access points
operating using custom protocol and a couple of others. This chapter presents the
absolute bleeding edge in wireless attacks out in the real world.
Chapter 8, Attacking WPA-Enterprise and RADIUS: This chapter graduates the user to
the next level by introducing him to advanced attacks on WPA-Enterprise and the
RADIUS server setup. These attacks will come in handy when the reader has to
penetration test large enterprise networks which rely on WPA-Enterprise and RADIUS
authentication to provide them with security. This is probably as advanced as Wi-Fi
attacks can get in the real world.
Chapter 9, WLAN Penetrating Testing Methodology: This is where all the learning from
the previous chapters comes together, and we will look at how to do a wireless
penetration test in a systematic and methodical way. We will learn about the various
phases of penetration testingPlanning, Discovery, Attack and Reporting, and apply it to
wireless penetration testing. We will also understand how to propose recommendations
and best practices after a wireless penetration test.
Chapter 10, WPS and Probes: This chapter covers the two new attacks in the industry
that have developed since the initial publication of this bookWPS brute-force and
probe sniffing for monitoring.

Wireless Lab Setup

"If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend six hours sharpening
my axe."
Abraham Lincoln, 16th US President

Behind every successful execution is hours or days of preparation, and wireless

penetration testing is no exception. In this chapter, we will create a wireless
lab that we will use for our experiments in this book. Consider this lab as your
preparation arena before you dive into real-world penetration testing!
Wireless penetration testing is a practical subject, and it is important to first set
up a lab where we can try out all the different experiments in this book in a safe
and controlled environment. It is important that you set up this lab first before
moving on in this book.

In this chapter, we will take a look at the following:

Hardware and software requirements

Installing Kali

Setting up an access point and configuring it

Installing the wireless card

Testing connectivity between the laptop and the access point

So let the games begin!

[1]

Wireless Lab Setup

Hardware requirements
We will need the following hardware to set up the wireless lab:

Two laptops with internal Wi-Fi cards: We will use one of the laptops as the
victim in our lab and the other as the penetration tester's laptop. Though almost
any laptop would fit this profile, laptops with at least 3 GB RAM are desirable. This is
because we may be running a lot of memory-intensive software in our experiments.

One wireless adapter (optional): Depending on the wireless card of your laptop,
we may need a USB Wi-Fi card that can support packet injection and packet sning,
which is supported by Kali. The best choice seems to be the Alfa AWUS036H card
from Alfa Networks, as Kali supports this out-of-the-box. This is available on
www.amazon.com for a retail price of 18 at the time of writing. An alternative
option is the Edimax EW-7711UAN, which is smaller and, marginally, cheaper.

One access point: Any access point that supports WEP/WPA/WPA2 encryption
standards would fit the bill. I will be using a TP-LINK TL-WR841N Wireless router
for the purpose of illustration in this book. You can purchase it from Amazon.com
for a retail price of around 20 at the time of writing.

An Internet connection: This will come in handy for performing research,

downloading software, and for some of our experiments.

Software requirements
We will need the following software to set up the wireless lab:

Kali: This software can be downloaded from the ocial website located at
http://www.kali.org. The software is open source, and you should be
able to download it directly from the website.

Windows XP/Vista/7: You will need any one of Windows XP, Windows Vista,
or Windows 7 installed on one of the laptops. This laptop will be used as the
victim machine for the rest of the book.

It is important to note that, even though we are using a Windows-based

OS for our tests, the techniques learnt can be applied to any Wi-Fi-capable
devices such as smart phones and tablets, among others.

[2]

Chapter 1

Installing Kali
Let's now quickly take a look at how to get up-and-running with Kali.
Kali will be installed on the laptop that will serve as the penetration tester's machine
for the rest of the book.

Time for action installing Kali

Kali is relatively simple to install. We will run Kali by booting it as a Live DVD and then install
it on the hard drive.
Perform the following instructions step by step:
Burn the Kali ISO (we are using the Kali 32-bit ISO) you downloaded onto a bootable DVD.

1.

Boot the laptop with this DVD and select the option Install from the Boot menu:

[3]

Wireless Lab Setup

2.

If booting was successful, then you should see an awesome retro screen as follows:

3.

This installer is similar to the GUI-based installers of most Linux systems and
should be simple to follow. Select the appropriate options in every screen and
start the installation process. Once the installation is done, restart the machine
as prompted and remove the DVD.

4.

Once the machine restarts, a login screen will be displayed. Type in the login as
root and the password as whatever you set it to during the installation process.
You should now be logged into your installed version of Kali. Congratulations!
I will change the desktop theme and some settings for this book. Feel free to
use your own themes and color settings!

[4]

Chapter 1

What just happened?

We have successfully installed Kali on the laptop! We will use this laptop as the penetration
tester's laptop for all other experiments in this book.

Have a go hero installing Kali on VirtualBox

We can also install Kali within virtualization software such as VirtualBox. If you don't
want to dedicate a full laptop to Kali, this is the best option. Kali's installation process
in VirtualBox is exactly the same. The only dierence is the pre-setup, which you will
have to create in VirtualBox. Have a go at it! You can download VirtualBox from
http://www.virtualbox.org.
One of the other ways in which we can install and use Kali is via USB drives. This is
particularly useful if you do not want to install on the hard drive but still want to store
persistent data on your Kali instance, such as scripts and new tools. We encourage
you to try this out as well!

Setting up the access point

Now we will set up the access point. As mentioned earlier, we will be using the TP-LINK
TL-WR841N Wireless Router for all the experiments in this book. However, feel free to
use any other access point. The basic principles of operation and usage remain the same.

Time for action configuring the access point

Let's begin! We will set the access point up to use Open Authentication with an SSID of
Wireless Lab.
Follow these instructions step by step:

1.

Power on the access point and use an Ethernet cable to connect your laptop to
one of the access point's Ethernet ports.

[5]

Wireless Lab Setup

2.

Enter the IP address of the access point configuration terminal in your browser. For
the TP-Link, it is by default 192.168.1.1. You should consult your access point's
setup guide to find its IP address. If you do not have the manuals for the access
point, you can also find the IP address by running the route n command. The
gateway IP address is typically the access point's IP. Once you are connected, you
should see a configuration portal that looks like this:

3.

Explore the various settings in the portal after logging in and find the settings
related to configuring a new SSID.

4.

Change the SSID to Wireless Lab. Depending on the access point, you may
have to reboot it for the settings to change:

[6]

Chapter 1

5.

Similarly, find the settings related to Wireless Security and change the setting to
Disable Security. Disable Security indicates that it is using Open Authentication mode.

6.

Save the changes to the access point and reboot it if required. Now your access
point should be up-and-running with an SSID Wireless Lab.

An easy way to verify this is to use the Wireless Configuration utility on Windows and
observe the available networks using the Windows laptop. You should find Wireless Lab
as one of the networks in the listing:

What just happened?

We have successfully setup our access point with an SSID Wireless Lab. It is broadcasting
its presence and this is being picked up by our Windows laptop and others within the
Radio Frequency (RF) range of the access point.
It is important to note that we configured our access point in Open mode, which is the
least secure. It is advisable not to connect this access point to the Internet for the time
being, as anyone within the RF range will be able to use it to access the Internet.

[7]

Wireless Lab Setup

Have a go hero configuring the access point to use WEP and WPA
Play around with the configuration options of your access point. Try to get it up-and-running
using encryption schemes such as WEP and WPA/WPA2. We will use these modes in later
chapters to illustrate attacks against them.

Setting up the wireless card

Setting up our wireless adapter is much easier than the access point. The advantage is that
Kali supports this card out-of-the-box and ships with all requisite device drivers to enable
packet injection and packet sning.

Time for action configuring your wireless card

We will be using the wireless adapter with the penetration tester's laptop.
Please follow these instructions step-by-step to set up your card:

1.

Plug in the card to one of the Kali laptop's USB ports and boot it.
Once you log in, open a console terminal and type in iwconfig. Your screen
should look as follows:

As you can see, wlan0 is the wireless interface created for the wireless adapter.
Type in ifconfig wlan0 to bring the interface up. Then, type in ifconfig
wlan0 to see the current state of the interface:

[8]

Chapter 1

2.

The MAC address 00:c0:ca:3e:bd:93 should match the MAC address written
under your Alfa card. I am using the Edimax that gives me the preceding MAC
address 80:1f:02:8f:34:d5. This is a quick check to ensure that you have
enabled the correct interface.

What just happened?

Kali ships with all the required drivers for the Alfa and Edimax adapters out of the box. As
soon as the machine booted, the adapter was recognized and was assigned the network
interface wlan0. Now our wireless adapter is up and functional!

Connecting to the access point

Now we will take a look at how to connect to the access point using the wireless adapter.
Our access point has an SSID Wireless Lab and does not use any authentication.

Time for action configuring your wireless card

Here we go! Follow these steps to connect your wireless card to the access point:

1.

Let's first see what wireless networks our adapter is currently detecting. Issue
the command iwlist wlan0 scanning and you will find a list of networks in
your vicinity:

[9]

Wireless Lab Setup

Keep scrolling down and you should find the Wireless Lab network in this list.
In my setup, it is detected as Cell 05; it may be dierent in yours. The ESSID
field contains the network name.

2.

As multiple access points can have the same SSID, verify that the MAC address
mentioned in the preceding Address field matches your access point's MAC.
A fast and easy way to get the MAC address is underneath the access point or
using web-based GUI settings.

3.

Now, issue the iwconfig wlan0 essid "Wireless Lab" command and then
iwconfig wlan0 to check the status. If you have successfully connected to the
access point, you should see the MAC address of the access point in the Access
Point: field in the output of iwconfig.

4.

We know that the access point has a management interface IP address 192.168.0.1
from its manual. Alternately, this is the same as the default router IP address when we
run the route n command. Let's set our IP address in the same subnet by issuing
the ifconfig wlan0 192.168.0.2 netmask 255.255.255.0 up command.
Verify the command succeeded by typing ifconfig wlan0 and checking the output.

5.

Now let's ping the access point by issuing the ping 192.168.0.1 command. If the
network connection has been set up properly, then you should see the responses from
the access point. You can additionally issue an arp a command to verify that the
response is coming from the access point. You should see that the MAC address of the
IP 192.168.0.1 is the access point's MAC address we noted earlier. It is important
to note that some of the more recent access points might have responses to Internet
Control Message Protocol (ICMP) echo request packets disabled. This is typically
done to make the access point secure out-of-the-box with only minimal configuration
settings available. In such a case, you can try to launch a browser and access the
web interface to verify that the connection is up-and-running:

[ 10 ]

Chapter 1

On the access point, we can verify connectivity by looking at the connection

logs. As you can see in the following log, the MAC address of the wireless card
4C:0F:6E:70:BD:CB has been logged making DHCP requests from the router:

What just happened?

We just connected to our access point successfully from Kali using our wireless adapter as
the wireless device. We also learnt how to verify that a connection has been established at
both the wireless client and the access point side.

Have a go hero establishing a connection in a WEP configuration

Here is a challenging exercise for youset up the access point in a WEP configuration. For
each of these, try establishing a connection with the access point using the wireless adapter.
Hint: check the manual for the iwconfig command by typing man iwconfig to see how to
configure the card to connect to WEP.

Pop quiz understanding the basics

Q1. After issuing the command ifconfig wlan0, how do you verify the wireless card
is up and functional?
Q2. Can we run all our experiments using the Kali live CD alone? Can we not install the CD
to the hard drive?
Q3. What does the command arp a show?
Q4. Which tool should we use in Kali to connect to WPA/WPA2 networks?

[ 11 ]

Wireless Lab Setup

Summary
This chapter provided you with detailed instructions on how to set up your own wireless
lab. Also, in the process, you learned the basic steps for:

Installing Kali on your hard drive and exploring other options such as Virtual
Machines and USBs

Configuring your access point over the web interface

Understanding and using several commands to configure and use your

wireless card

Verifying the connection state between the wireless client and the
access point

It is important that you gain confidence in configuring the system. If you aren't confident,
it is advisable that you repeat the preceding examples a couple of times. In later chapters,
we will design more complicated scenarios.
In the next chapter, we will learn about inherent design-based insecurities in WLANs
design. We will use the network analyzer tool, Wireshark, to understand these concepts
in a practical way.

[ 12 ]

Get more information Kali Linux Wireless Penetration Testing Beginner's Guide

Where to buy this book

You can buy Kali Linux Wireless Penetration Testing Beginner's Guide from the Packt
Publishing website.
Alternatively, you can buy the book from Amazon, BN.com, Computer Manuals and most internet
book retailers.
Click here for ordering and shipping details.

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